Training undergraduate and graduate students to be scientists and scholars is challenging, with constantly emerging technologies often impractical to bring to teaching laboratories. Even with well-equipped teaching laboratories and access to web-based bioinformatics tools, the semester-long or half-semester traditional course formats limit exposure. Students often finding topics of interest during the course or relevant techniques for their graduate research projects. Learners are often overwhelmed by coursework and deadlines, unable to dig deeper into topics that inspire them and develop intrinsic motivation. As part of small (10-18 student) upper-division courses, we have created public WordPress sites for several molecular biology courses enrolling undergraduate and graduate students from a broad range of disciplines and programs. The sites are populated with student-produced creative works they are willing to share publicly. Students work individually or in mixed groups of undergraduate and graduate students to select a topic of interest based on the course subject (metagenomics, high-throughput discovery science, and yeast metabolic engineering). Depending on the course, students create lessons, podcasts, video tutorials, and case studies that are designed to be accessible to a broad audience, reliable, and engaging. Every semester students contribute additional resources and use existing student-produced materials as supplemental readings, revising and updating as necessary. Instructors carefully curate the materials using standard formatting requirements and evaluate the assignment based on rubrics. In courses without textbooks, because of the nature of fast-paced evolving scientific technologies, student co-creators provide much-needed accessible information that others can leverage to understand the powerful applications of modern molecular biotechnologies. Despite the impact these assignments have on current and future participants, we seek to truly provide equitable access to these sites by interconnecting sites between courses at NC State and beyond. How can we promote openness and use of these resources beyond our niche courses? We believe the course websites can serve as a foundation for similar assignments at other institutions to empower more students to create and share, therefore continuously improving the resources and educational experience for learners. In addition to the student-produced resources designed, instructors have an opportunity to discuss intellectual property, sharing, privacy, equity, and open science to help future scholars embrace openness and equity.
After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:
- Describe two challenges associated with teaching courses on topics that are specific and constantly evolving
- List three different assignments for undergraduate and graduate students that contribute to open educational resources and serve as supplemental course materials
- Explain potential discussion assignments centered on openness, equity, and intellectual property that can be incorporated into courses with OER assignments
- Identify two potential connections between these WordPress sites that will allow for broader use of these resources
- Evaluate potential approaches to increase connectivity and sustainability of these resources
