Halmos Faculty Participates in NSF STEM for All Video Showcase

From May 5 to May 12, Halmos Faculty Member Arthur Sikora, Ph.D. collaborated with faculty around the country to present their video entitled, “Rich Collaborations Yield More than Expected: BASIL lab. This curriculum from the BASIL (Biochemistry Authentic Scientific Inquiry Laboratory) collaboration aims to get students to transition from thinking like students to thinking and acting like scientists. Students will analyze proteins with known structure but unknown function using both computational and wet-lab techniques. BASIL is designed for undergraduate biochemistry lab courses but can be adapted to first year (or even high school) settings, as well as upper-level undergraduate or graduate coursework. It is targeted to students in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, or related majors.

Sikora stated, “We have been fortunate to have robust anticipated learning outcomes that were developed by our collaborators at Purdue. The full set is published in “Anticipated Learning Outcomes for a Biochemistry Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience Aimed at Predicting Protein Function from Structure: Implications for Assessment Design” Irby et al BAMBED 2018. Several members of the group have started working with these ALOs to design targeted assessments.”

The 2020 National Science Foundation (NSF) STEM for All Video Showcase is an annual online event. Each year, it hosts between 100-200 three-minute video presentations from federally funded projects that aim to improve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and computer science education. During the seven days of this online event, Principal Investigators, practitioners, administrators, researchers, policy makers, industry and the public at large are encouraged to participate. All participants will be able to view the video presentations, post to the facilitated discussions related to each video, and vote for the videos that are most effective in conveying the creative work being done. All videos and discussions will be archived for perpetual future access. In addition, all videos from this Showcase will be added to the collection in the STEM for All Multiplex after the online May event.