Examining whether and how instructional coordination occurs within introductory undergraduate STEM courses

Instructors’ interactions can foster knowledge sharing around teaching and the use of research-based instructional strategies (RBIS). Coordinated teaching presents an impetus for instructors’ interactions and creates opportunities for instructional improvement but also potentially limits an instructor’s autonomy. In this study, we sought to characterize the extent of coordination present in introductory undergraduate courses and to understand how departments and instructors implement and experience course coordination. We examined survey data from 3,641 chemistry, mathematics, and physics instructors at three institution types and conducted follow-up interviews with a subset of 24 survey respondents to determine what types of coordination existed, what factors led to coordination, how coordination constrained instruction, and how instructors maintained autonomy within coordinated contexts. We classified three approaches to coordination at both the overall course and course component levels: independent (i.e., not coordinated), collaborative (decision-making by instructor and others), controlled (decision-making by others, not instructor). Two course components, content coverage and textbooks, were highly coordinated. These curricular components were often decided through formal or informal committees, but these decisions were seldom revisited. This limited the ability for instructors to participate in the decision-making process, the level of interactions between instructors, and the pedagogical growth that could have occurred through these conversations. Decision-making around the other two course components, instructional methods and exams, was more likely to be independently determined by the instructors, who valued this autonomy. Participants in the study identified various ways in which collaborative coordination of courses can promote but also inhibit pedagogical growth. Our findings indicate that the benefits of collaborative course coordination can be realized when departments develop coordinated approaches that value each instructor’s autonomy, incorporate shared and ongoing decision-making, and facilitate collaborative interactions and knowledge sharing among instructors

Examining whether and how instructional coordination occurs within introductory undergraduate STEM courses

Instructors’ interactions can foster knowledge sharing around teaching and the use of research-based instructional strategies (RBIS). Coordinated teaching presents an impetus for instructors’ interactions and creates opportunities for instructional improvement but also potentially limits an instructor’s autonomy. In this study, we sought to characterize the extent of coordination present in introductory undergraduate courses and to understand how departments and instructors implement and experience course coordination. We examined survey data from 3,641 chemistry, mathematics, and physics instructors at three institution types and conducted follow-up interviews with a subset of 24 survey respondents to determine what types of coordination existed, what factors led to coordination, how coordination constrained instruction, and how instructors maintained autonomy within coordinated contexts. We classified three approaches to coordination at both the overall course and course component levels: independent (i.e., not coordinated), collaborative (decisionmaking by instructor and others), controlled (decision-making by others, not instructor). Two course components, content coverage and textbooks, were highly coordinated. These curricular components were often decided through formal or informal committees, but these decisions were seldom revisited. This limited the ability for instructors to participate in the decision-making process, the level of interactions between instructors, and the pedagogical growth that could have occurred through these conversations. Decision-making around the other two course components, instructional methods and exams, was more likely to be independently determined by the instructors, who valued this autonomy. Participants in the study identified various ways in which collaborative coordination of courses can promote but also inhibit pedagogical growth. Our findings indicate that the benefits of collaborative course coordination can be realized when departments develop coordinated approaches that value each instructor’s autonomy, incorporate shared and ongoing decision-making, and facilitate collaborative interactions and knowledge sharing among instructors

Examining whether and how instructional coordination occurs within introductory undergraduate STEM courses

Instructors’ interactions can foster knowledge sharing around teaching and the use of research-based instructional strategies (RBIS). Coordinated teaching presents an impetus for instructors’ interactions and creates opportunities for instructional improvement but also potentially limits an instructor’s autonomy. In this study, we sought to characterize the extent of coordination present in introductory undergraduate courses and to understand how departments and instructors implement and experience course coordination. We examined survey data from 3,641 chemistry, mathematics, and physics instructors at three institution types and conducted follow-up interviews with a subset of 24 survey respondents to determine what types of coordination existed, what factors led to coordination, how coordination constrained instruction, and how instructors maintained autonomy within coordinated contexts. We classified three approaches to coordination at both the overall course and course component levels: independent (i.e., not coordinated), collaborative (decision-making by instructor and others), controlled (decision-making by others, not instructor). Two course components, content coverage and textbooks, were highly coordinated. These curricular components were often decided through formal or informal committees, but these decisions were seldom revisited. This limited the ability for instructors to participate in the decision-making process, the level of interactions between instructors, and the pedagogical growth that could have occurred through these conversations. Decision-making around the other two course components, instructional methods and exams, was more likely to be independently determined by the instructors, who valued this autonomy. Participants in the study identified various ways in which collaborative coordination of courses can promote but also inhibit pedagogical growth. Our findings indicate that the benefits of collaborative course coordination can be realized when departments develop coordinated approaches that value each instructor’s autonomy, incorporate shared and ongoing decision-making, and facilitate collaborative interactions and knowledge sharing among instructors

Approaches to link RNA secondary structures with splicing regulation

In higher eukaryotes, alternative splicing is usually regulated by protein factors, which bind to the pre-mRNA and affect the recognition of splicing signals. There is recent evidence that the secondary structure of the pre-mRNA may also play an important role in this process, either by facilitating or by hindering the interaction with factors and small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs) that regulate splicing. Moreover, the secondary structure could play a fundamental role in the splicing of yeast species, which lack many of the regulatory splicing factors present in metazoans. This review describes the steps in the analysis of the secondary structure of the pre-mRNA and its possible relation to splicing. As a working example, we use the case of yeast and the problem of the recognition of the 3-prime splice site.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figure

Novel conserved domains in proteins with predicted roles in eukaryotic cell-cycle regulation, decapping and RNA stability

BACKGROUND: The emergence of eukaryotes was characterized by the expansion and diversification of several ancient RNA-binding domains and the apparent de novo innovation of new RNA-binding domains. The identification of these RNA-binding domains may throw light on the emergence of eukaryote-specific systems of RNA metabolism. RESULTS: Using sensitive sequence profile searches, homology-based fold recognition and sequence-structure superpositions, we identified novel, divergent versions of the Sm domain in the Scd6p family of proteins. This family of Sm-related domains shares certain features of conventional Sm domains, which are required for binding RNA, in addition to possessing some unique conserved features. We also show that these proteins contain a second previously uncharacterized C-terminal domain, termed the FDF domain (after a conserved sequence motif in this domain). The FDF domain is also found in the fungal Dcp3p-like and the animal FLJ22128-like proteins, where it fused to a C-terminal domain of the YjeF-N domain family. In addition to the FDF domains, the FLJ22128-like proteins contain yet another divergent version of the Sm domain at their extreme N-terminus. We show that the YjeF-N domains represent a novel version of the Rossmann fold that has acquired a set of catalytic residues and structural features that distinguish them from the conventional dehydrogenases. CONCLUSIONS: Several lines of contextual information suggest that the Scd6p family and the Dcp3p-like proteins are conserved components of the eukaryotic RNA metabolism system. We propose that the novel domains reported here, namely the divergent versions of the Sm domain and the FDF domain may mediate specific RNA-protein and protein-protein interactions in cytoplasmic ribonucleoprotein complexes. More specifically, the protein complexes containing Sm-like domains of the Scd6p family are predicted to regulate the stability of mRNA encoding proteins involved in cell cycle progression and vesicular assembly. The Dcp3p and FLJ22128 proteins may localize to the cytoplasmic processing bodies and possibly catalyze a specific processing step in the decapping pathway. The explosive diversification of Sm domains appears to have played a role in the emergence of several uniquely eukaryotic ribonucleoprotein complexes, including those involved in decapping and mRNA stability

Deciphering the universe of RNA structures and trans RNA-RNA interactions of transcriptomes in vivo: from experimental protocols to computational analyses

The last few years have seen an explosion of experimental and computational methods for investigating RNA structures of entire transcriptomes in vivo. Very recent experimental protocols now also allow trans RNA–RNA interactions to be probed in a transcriptome-wide manner. All of the experimental strategies require comprehensive computational pipelines for analysing the raw data and converting it back into actual RNA structure features or trans RNA–RNA interactions. The overall performance of these methods thus strongly depends on the experimental and the computational protocols employed. In order to get the best out of both worlds, both aspects need to be optimised simultaneously. This review introduced the methods and proposes ideas how they could be further improved