RCN-UBE: An Inclusive Community Transforming the Assessment of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Learning in Undergraduate Programs

This project aims to serve the national interest by building an inclusive community of educators committed to implementing best practices in the equitable assessment of student learning in college-level biochemistry and molecular biology courses and curricula. The last decade has seen an increasing awareness of the need for, and value of, systematic assessment of student learning outcomes.

Assessment is used not only at the end of courses but throughout lessons, modules, courses, and curricula. The data generated in assessment are used by instructors, academic programs, and institutions for evaluating both student learning outcomes and teaching effectiveness, as well as for identifying areas of improvement. Furthermore, since assessment instruments are limited by the perspectives of the people who develop and use them, it is essential to bring a variety of perspectives into their design and interpretation.

Despite its importance, few molecular life science instructors receive formal training in assessment. By delivering training in assessment, this project fills a gap, strengthening the nation’s higher education programs in the molecular life sciences. Moreover, by centering the project on issues of equity, the project builds an inclusive community of practitioners that more accurately reflects the demographics of the nation.

While many faculty understand and agree with the importance of assessment, putting it into practice can be challenging because of a lack of formal training, particularly in the molecular life sciences. Therefore, discipline-specific tools and training for faculty in biochemistry and molecular biology are necessary. To meet this need - and drawing upon a highly successful preliminary workshop - this project offers a series of assessment workshops over the course of five years.

These workshops are rooted in evidence-based strategies and universal exam design with the goal of creating equitable assessment tools, processes, and practices. The workshop series focuses on three types of assessment: summative, formative, and alternative assessment, which uses non-examination instruments to measure the acquisition and application of biochemistry and molecular biology knowledge and/or skills.

Surveys and participant interviews will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the workshops, and social network analysis will evaluate the growth and diversification of the network. Participants will be given opportunities to reflect on the ways in which training and support is given to network participants, including the promotion of instructors from historically marginalized populations into positions of leadership within the national community of molecular life science educators.

Discussions of the community’s inclusivity will be guided by two members on our Steering Committee with training on equity and inclusion in STEM. The network’s activities will serve as a nexus for development of a larger community of biochemistry and molecular biology scientist-educators dedicated to the assessment of student outcomes in biochemistry and molecular biology.

This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.