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A Culturally Responsive Curricular Revision to Improve Engagement and Learning in an Undergraduate Microbiology Lab Course

We seek to increase student engagement and success to subsequently lead to increased retention and degree attainment for students at our Hispanic-serving institution. We hypothesized that using a culturally responsive approach in an undergraduate microbiology lab would increase engagement and learni...

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Autores principales: Fuller, Karla S., Torres Rivera, Camila
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7838382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33519726
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.577852
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author Fuller, Karla S.
Torres Rivera, Camila
author_facet Fuller, Karla S.
Torres Rivera, Camila
author_sort Fuller, Karla S.
collection PubMed
description We seek to increase student engagement and success to subsequently lead to increased retention and degree attainment for students at our Hispanic-serving institution. We hypothesized that using a culturally responsive approach in an undergraduate microbiology lab would increase engagement and learning gains. Using a culturally responsive approach allowed students to start their learning from their own place of understanding—centering students’ lived experiences. Students interviewed family members to learn about “home remedies,” and then devised experiments to test whether those home remedies affected growth of bacteria commonly implicated in gastrointestinal distress (Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, and Escherichia coli) or sore throat (Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Streptococcus pyogenes, and Mycoplasma pneumoniae). As a final assessment, students generated project posters which they presented at a class symposium. Implementation of a culturally responsive research experience focused on the gut microbiome resulted in increased learning gains as evidenced by movement up Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy Scale. Student feedback indicated increased engagement, increased confidence in communicating science and a deeper understanding and appreciation for microbiology. Taken together, the results indicate that students appreciate a more culturally responsive and student-centered approach to learning in microbiology and encourages expansion of this approach to other modules in the course. This paper includes responsive data to support this claim, as well as a sample course calendar and supplementary learning material to support the human microbiome approach to microbiology.
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spelling pubmed-78383822021-01-28 A Culturally Responsive Curricular Revision to Improve Engagement and Learning in an Undergraduate Microbiology Lab Course Fuller, Karla S. Torres Rivera, Camila Front Microbiol Microbiology We seek to increase student engagement and success to subsequently lead to increased retention and degree attainment for students at our Hispanic-serving institution. We hypothesized that using a culturally responsive approach in an undergraduate microbiology lab would increase engagement and learning gains. Using a culturally responsive approach allowed students to start their learning from their own place of understanding—centering students’ lived experiences. Students interviewed family members to learn about “home remedies,” and then devised experiments to test whether those home remedies affected growth of bacteria commonly implicated in gastrointestinal distress (Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, and Escherichia coli) or sore throat (Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Streptococcus pyogenes, and Mycoplasma pneumoniae). As a final assessment, students generated project posters which they presented at a class symposium. Implementation of a culturally responsive research experience focused on the gut microbiome resulted in increased learning gains as evidenced by movement up Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy Scale. Student feedback indicated increased engagement, increased confidence in communicating science and a deeper understanding and appreciation for microbiology. Taken together, the results indicate that students appreciate a more culturally responsive and student-centered approach to learning in microbiology and encourages expansion of this approach to other modules in the course. This paper includes responsive data to support this claim, as well as a sample course calendar and supplementary learning material to support the human microbiome approach to microbiology. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-01-13 /pmc/articles/PMC7838382/ /pubmed/33519726 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.577852 Text en Copyright © 2021 Fuller and Torres Rivera. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Microbiology
Fuller, Karla S.
Torres Rivera, Camila
A Culturally Responsive Curricular Revision to Improve Engagement and Learning in an Undergraduate Microbiology Lab Course
title A Culturally Responsive Curricular Revision to Improve Engagement and Learning in an Undergraduate Microbiology Lab Course
title_full A Culturally Responsive Curricular Revision to Improve Engagement and Learning in an Undergraduate Microbiology Lab Course
title_fullStr A Culturally Responsive Curricular Revision to Improve Engagement and Learning in an Undergraduate Microbiology Lab Course
title_full_unstemmed A Culturally Responsive Curricular Revision to Improve Engagement and Learning in an Undergraduate Microbiology Lab Course
title_short A Culturally Responsive Curricular Revision to Improve Engagement and Learning in an Undergraduate Microbiology Lab Course
title_sort culturally responsive curricular revision to improve engagement and learning in an undergraduate microbiology lab course
topic Microbiology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7838382/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33519726
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.577852
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