Molecular Biology Concepts for Inquiry: A Guide to Inquiry

By Jennifer a Hackett and Jennifer A. Hackett

This curriculum guide describes how an introductory college molecular biology course can be taught through inquiry using the BSCS "5E" Inquiry method of learning science. It is intended to frame a course that makes use of the textbook Molecular Biology: Concepts for Inquiry and the companion student workbook Molecular Biology Concepts for Inquiry: The Exploration Workbook. This curriculum is appropriate for college courses and high school courses taught at the college level.

This guide provides a detailed curricular plan for how inquiry experiences might be used effectively in a molecular biology course that aims to maximize conceptual understanding and the application of logic. A combination of experiments*, class activities and discussions of textbook readings are used in lieu of most direct lecture. All of the pages from the student workbook are replicated here and are accompanied by answers and pedagogical suggestions for how these inquiry experiences might be guided by the teacher. Each lesson includes pedagogical commentary, roles of stages of inquiry, a list of concepts taught, relevant student misconceptions, estimated timing, materials, answer keys, and related workbook pages with at-a-glance marginal notations describing the stage of inquiry and the role of the teacher.

Although this guide was written primarily for teachers it was formatted with the intention that students learning molecular biology on their own could also use this book as an answer key, with answers separate from workbook pages. This curriculum can be readily adapted for remote online learning that uses the textbook in lieu of lecture and in which the instructor guides online discussions and groupwork in the student workbook using the instructor prompts/feedback described in this guidebook.

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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES:
Students explore evidence through logic to construct an understanding of concepts and eliminate misconceptions. Students elaborate on their understanding by applying it to new situations. In these activities an instructor periodically guides student thinking in small groups and leads class discussions of key concepts following activities. Inquiry activities include: introductory biochemistry, how proteins contribute to modes of inheritance, the structure and function of fluorescent proteins, the conceptual basis of PCR, the function of restriction enzymes and their use in engineering, the design of the mutagenesis of fluorescent proteins through Gibson assembly, analysis of an iGEM device, the design of a Golden Gate assembly of gene parts, epigenetic inheritance in imprinted diseases, analysis of the genetics of cancer (childhood vs. adult; inherited predisposition vs. sporadic), genome instability at telomeres, evaluation of next-generation DNA sequencing strategies, and the design of a CRISPR RNA to cure a genetic disease. Several class activities focus on pre-lab planning or post-experiment analyses of sample data that could either stand alone or could be used as a conceptual framework around which suggested wet lab experiments could be conducted. *EXPERIMENTS:
Suggested wet lab protocols are provided at https: //hackettmolecularbiology.blogspot.com/. The roles of these experiments in the overall inquiry strategy are described in this guide.

CLASSROOM DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
These open-ended questions serve as the basis for discussions following textbook reading assignments. Readings and discussions substitute for most direct lecture in explaining concepts and they are accompanied by publicly available online self-assessment reading comprehension quizzes. The author shares quiz templates (for editing/distribution) and textbook image slides with instructors upon request through https: //hackettmolecularbiology.blogspot.com/.

UNIT SELF-ASSESSMENTS

APPENDICES AND REFERENCE MATERIALS

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1070240877
• ISBN13: 9781070240879
• Release Date: July 2019
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 1.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.5" x 11.0"