View Program - 2022 Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics Conference

Improving and assuring public trust in science is globally valuable, yet training in the responsible and ethical conduct of research (RECR) is often first made available to graduate students. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are classes in which students participate in the entire process of scientific inquiry, from project conception through data analysis and dissemination. Thus, CUREs expose students to circumstances in which they will need to employ ethical decision-making, for example in data collection and dissemination (data management practices), data analysis and display (awareness of what constitutes research misconduct), and authorship on research group presentations and publications. CUREs are becoming more prevalent in undergraduate curricula, partly because of their ability to democratize access to research experiences. So, CUREs are ideally poised to facilitate RECR training for developing scientists. I previously redesigned a Cell Biology and Genetics Lab course (BIOL 104) as a CURE, in which students conduct background literature reading and develop and experimentally test a hypothesis about genetic incompatibilities between populations of the microscopic nematode Caenorhabditis briggsae, a relative of C. elegans. I recently added direct instruction on six "core" RECR topics defined by the US Department of Health and Human Services. To assess the perceived value of RECR training to undergraduates, and to measure the efficacy of that training, pre- and post-semester instruments were used to collect attitude and RECR knowledge data. Student artifacts, such as written responses to prompts, were also collected. Despite participants being predominantly third and fourth year undergraduates, sixteen percent did not initially accurately identify which sentences in a peer-reviewed research manuscript should contain citations. Two-thirds of students were not familiar with policies related to image manipulation. Following instruction, students made significant gains in understanding the ethical norms for the six RECR topics. Perhaps most critically, the participants did not feel that undergraduate scientists have a role in monitoring and alerting others about research ethics violations. These results both underscore the need to provide more direct training of RECR and also highlight the role that CUREs can play in meeting this need. The presentation will also describe the RECR instructional materials and activities, as well as a quantitative evaluation of RCR student learning outcomes.

Integrating genetic incompatibility research and research ethics training in a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE)