Microbial Model Construction Activity for Introducing Students to Microbiome and Metagenomic Fields

Educational activities in biology teaching focused on model construction allow students to make the invisible evident. The development and integration of these pedagogical strategies in emerging sciences is essential and necessary in the classroom of noncollege academia. A two-component pedagogical activity was developed to expose high school students to the emerging disciplines of microbiomes and metagenomics. An introductory talk about microbiomes and host-microbe interactions was designed and presented to high school students at an educational center in the western region of Puerto Rico. After the talk, the students were organized into teams and required to choose one of the microbiome cases discussed to generate an oral presentation and a model describing the microbe’s relationship with the host (microbiome interactions). A total of five models were generated by the students, which represented bacterial and yeast interaction with animals and plants. The teaching-learning process was assessed using pre/posttests and model evaluation instruments. The combination of the talk, model construction, and oral presentation increased the general knowledge of the participants by 43% from pre- to posttest. The students’ knowledge of the concepts of metagenomics and microbiomes increased 30% and 49%, respectively. The data support that students were able to define and integrate the concepts successfully after the implementation of the educational strategies. This team-based educational model of exposing students to emerging disciplines is necessary to promote the active learning process in current topics in science in a nontraditional way.