Journal of undergraduate neuroscience education : JUNE : a publication of FUN, Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience最新文献

The Mobile Neuroscience Lab is a project that facilitates combined pedagogical strategies of active learning and neuroscience outreach as a service learning component of a physiological psychology course. The overall project goals were to improve science knowledge, foster oral communication, and encourage positive science attitudes and beliefs. Of these goals, positive science attitudes and beliefs were assessed. During active learning, university students completed hands-on activities corresponding to the physiological psychology course. Following, during the neuroscience outreach activity ("learning through teaching"), university students and middle school students engaged in small group activities (one university student to five middle school students) using the same hands-on activities. Assessment of the perceived benefit of the active learning showed that university and middle school students responded favorably to the hands-on activities. Students' science attitudes were also assessed (Hillman et al., 2016) using a pre-test, post-test design. Data showed that the neuroscience activity did not change middle school science attitudes and beliefs (p > .05), possibly as the science attitudes and beliefs were already positive (moderate to high) prior to the outreach activity. However, qualitative data showed that the aspect of the neuroscience outreach activity that most assisted the middle school students in their learning was seeing the brain, touching the brain, and social interaction with the university students. Overall, the pedagogical strategies of active learning, and "learning through teaching", were received with enthusiasm by university and secondary education students. Future studies will include classroom teachers' assessment of these hands-on activities.

To improve undergraduate students' understanding of neuroanatomy and structure, we leveraged existing virtual reality infrastructure to create a novel dissection assignment in an undergraduate neuroscience course. Students completed a virtual reality dissection of the central nervous system that augmented status quo instruction in lecture and textbook format. We found that such an assignment is feasible at a regional comprehensive university with intrauniversity partnerships that are mutually beneficial. Results showed positive engagement from students and feasibility of incorporating virtual reality in undergraduate neuroscience courses.

The COVID-19 pandemic abruptly challenged educators to transition previously in-person courses to an online environment. This has been especially difficult for laboratory courses where students must experience the process of science to develop lab skills and scientific competencies. Due to the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, it is essential that instructional resources are flexible and robust for use in various potential learning environments. The Lt software platform (ADInstruments) is a resource designed to support in-person, online, and hybrid learning environments. Lt supports the in-person lab experience by integrating with data collection hardware and facilitating collaboration through group-based activity. In addition, the platform also provides several avenues for teaching online labs using the same experiments that would be done on campus. At home, students can analyze Lt's built-in example data, or be supplied with low-cost hardware to complete labs remotely. In conjunction with other online tools, Lt can support online group work and student collaboration. Lt hosts a wide range of pre-built lab experiments and activities covering neuroscience, anatomy, physiology, clinical health science, biology, and chemistry. Although the material can be used "out-of-the-box", the content is completely editable and new labs can be created. Feedback from students suggests that Lt has proved valuable for supporting flexible instructional practices during the pandemic.

Processing of words can be meaning-based (deep processing) or appearance/sound-based (shallow processing). A simple experiment that can be conducted online, asynchronously or synchronously, demonstrates that the number of words recalled from a list of 24 words read aloud depends on the instructions given to students beforehand. Students in the deep processing group were asked to write 'yes' or 'no' - is the word likeable/pleasant, while students in the shallow processing group were asked to write 'yes' or 'no' - does the word contain an E or G. After a one-minute delay in which students performed a backward calculation task, they had two minutes to recall as many words as possible from the list. Regardless of how the online experiment was conducted, asynchronously or synchronously, the deep processing group recalled an average of 11-14 words compared to the shallow processing group, which recalled an average of 8-10 words. The deep processing group consistently recalled 3-6 more words on average than the shallow processing group. After debriefing the students about the experiment, the instructor can focus class discussion on topics that include experimental design, methodology, reproducibility, data analysis, as well as using these data as an evidence-based starting point for best learning practices.

The Allen Brain Map is the main data repository for the Allen Institute for Brain Science, containing big, open datasets commonly used in neuroscience research (Allen Institute for Brain Science, 2022). Open data from the Allen Brain Map can be used to teach core concepts in neuroscience, data analysis methods, and other critical skills and knowledge to neuroscience students. These datasets can be used as the main data source for completely online lab experiences, or analyzed in combination with data students collect themselves. Applications may range in scope and format from a short worksheet used in a single class session to a coding tutorial to a guided independent research project. While open online data cannot fully replace lab experiences for learning techniques, they can be used to expose students to analysis of big data, introduce resources widely used in the field, and teach skills like statistics and coding. This article reviews potential assignment formats where big and open data can be applied, introduces selected popular resources and sample use cases for each, and discusses benefits and limitations of open online data for lab experiences. Some specific applications in the context of distance learning are also detailed.

The field of neuroscience offers exciting, yet complex, insights into the human mind. In recent years, the need to improve the dialogue between neuroscientists and the public has been recognized, and an emphasis has been placed on the generation of public-based educational programs which reach outside the academic environment and into the community. One promising avenue includes the generation of mutually beneficial academia-community partnerships. These have the potential to allow faculty and students to acquire the necessary skills to become effective "neuroscience ambassadors", while delivering attractive, fun, informative and educational opportunities to the general public. The Department of Psychology/Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Minor at Saint Francis University (SFU) created a public-oriented, neuroscience-based network of educational programs with local public libraries, Girl and Cub scout troops, elementary schools, high schools, children museums and nursing homes, in rural Pennsylvania. We envisioned that the programs will serve to improve academia-community conversations and benefit students, faculty, community partners and the public alike. In this paper, the design, implementation, implications, limitations, and future directions of the project are discussed.

Open educational resources (OERs) promise to play an increasing role in making educational materials such as textbooks available to all and in helping to (slightly) mitigate exorbitant costs often associated with post-secondary education. True OERs provide the ability to use, distribute and even adapt available resources to fit with the needs of the user. Many other free resources often get lumped in with OERs but may have restrictions prohibiting specific forms of use, modification or distribution. In neuroscience, there is a growing collection of OER and open-access materials for instructors to consider incorporating into their courses, ranging from textbooks and other books to entire courses, a single lecture or videos and animations. This paper briefly reviews two free online textbooks for neuroscience. Further, the available platforms for organizing and distributing OERs are outlined and briefly discussed, with an emphasis on their usefulness at the present time for neuroscience education.

Neuroscience curricula vary widely across higher education institutions due to the lack of an accrediting body or a set of unified educational concepts or outcomes. Each institution has developed a unique set of fundamental knowledge, topical subdisciplines, and core competencies to be delivered in a neuroscience program. Core concepts would provide neuroscience departments and programs with a generally agreed upon set of overarching principles that organize knowledge and can be applied to all sub-disciplines of the field, providing a useful framework from which to approach neuroscience education. We set out to develop a consensus set of neuroscience core concepts to aid in higher education curricular development and assessment. Suggestions for neuroscience core concepts were solicited from neuroscience faculty in a nationwide survey and analyzed using an inductive, independent coding model to identify eight core concepts based upon survey responses. Accompanying explanatory paragraphs for each core concept were developed through an iterative process. We presented the resulting core concepts to 134 neuroscience educators at a satellite session of the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience 2020 Summer Virtual Meeting (SVM). Individuals and groups of faculty provided feedback regarding the accuracy, comprehensiveness, and clarity of each concept and explanatory paragraph, as well as the structure of the document as a whole. We continue to refine the core concepts based upon this feedback and will distribute the final document in a subsequent publication. Following publication of the finalized list of core concepts, we will develop tools to help educators incorporate the core concepts into their curricula.

Case studies are an effective active learning method that increases student engagement and are readily adaptable from in-person to online learning environments. In this perspective, Neuroscience Case Network fellows (NeuroCaseNet; NSF-RCN-UBE Grant #1624104) provide specific examples of how case studies were successfully adapted for synchronous and asynchronous online learning, including general strategies and best practices for adapting case studies into both online learning environments.