Abstract:

While the advantages of active learning activities are well documented, their use in upper division undergraduate biology courses remains scarce. These courses are usually focused on delivering large amounts of content through passive lecture-based instruction that only promotes lower-order cognitive skills. Here we present a step-by-step active learning activity that uses freely available molecular visualization tools to introduce students to the principles governing protein folding and protein-protein interactions. During this activity, students fold their own protein models and work with molecular visualization software to predict the effect of certain mutations in the structure and function of a transcription factor. Using an anonymous quiz, we have found that students taking a lecture about this topic followed by this activity, are more proficient at answering questions about protein folding a protein-protein interaction three weeks after taking this activity than right after the lecture. Quiz results also indicate that students acquire a more realistic view of protein structure and a deeper comprehension of the impact that mutations may have in protein structure and function. Overall, our results support a blended approach, where lectures are complemented with active learning activities, as an effective method to increase student’s content retention and promote higher order cognitive skills in upper division molecular biology courses.

Keywords:

Molecular Visualization Technology, Active Learning, Undergraduate Teaching.