18 research outputs found

    An inclusive Research and Education Community (iREC) model to facilitate undergraduate science education reform

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    Funding: This work was supported by Howard Hughes Medical Institute grants to DIH is GT12052 and MJG is GT15338.Over the last two decades, there have been numerous initiatives to improve undergraduate student outcomes in STEM. One model for scalable reform is the inclusive Research Education Community (iREC). In an iREC, STEM faculty from colleges and universities across the nation are supported to adopt and sustainably implement course-based research – a form of science pedagogy that enhances student learning and persistence in science. In this study, we used pathway modeling to develop a qualitative description that explicates the HHMI Science Education Alliance (SEA) iREC as a model for facilitating the successful adoption and continued advancement of new curricular content and pedagogy. In particular, outcomes that faculty realize through their participation in the SEA iREC were identified, organized by time, and functionally linked. The resulting pathway model was then revised and refined based on several rounds of feedback from over 100 faculty members in the SEA iREC who participated in the study. Our results show that in an iREC, STEM faculty organized as a long-standing community of practice leverage one another, outside expertise, and data to adopt, implement, and iteratively advance their pedagogy. The opportunity to collaborate in this manner and, additionally, to be recognized for pedagogical contributions sustainably engages STEM faculty in the advancement of their pedagogy. Here, we present a detailed pathway model of SEA that, together with underpinning features of an iREC identified in this study, offers a framework to facilitate transformations in undergraduate science education.Peer reviewe

    Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

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    Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

    Models of classroom assessment for course-based research experiences

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    Course-based research pedagogy involves positioning students as contributors to authentic research projects as part of an engaging educational experience that promotes their learning and persistence in science. To develop a model for assessing and grading students engaged in this type of learning experience, the assessment aims and practices of a community of experienced course-based research instructors were collected and analyzed. This approach defines four aims of course-based research assessment—(1) Assessing Laboratory Work and Scientific Thinking; (2) Evaluating Mastery of Concepts, Quantitative Thinking and Skills; (3) Appraising Forms of Scientific Communication; and (4) Metacognition of Learning—along with a set of practices for each aim. These aims and practices of assessment were then integrated with previously developed models of course-based research instruction to reveal an assessment program in which instructors provide extensive feedback to support productive student engagement in research while grading those aspects of research that are necessary for the student to succeed. Assessment conducted in this way delicately balances the need to facilitate students’ ongoing research with the requirement of a final grade without undercutting the important aims of a CRE education

    World Congress Integrative Medicine & Health 2017: Part one

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    Pan-European distribution modelling of stream riparian zones based on multi-source Earth Observation data

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    Freshwater ecosystems are among the most degraded and threatened globally. A need for systematic assessment of riverine habitats is thus well-documented. Riparian zones are especially important due to the large array of ecosystem and social services they can provide, while also recently gaining a major role in the new European biodiversity policy. In this context, the necessity to gather spatial information on extent, distribution and characteristics of the riparian zones is clear. This paper presents the development of a novel model to derive geographical distribution and basic characteristics of stream riparian zones in Europe, including both river-floodplain systems and the riparian networks of minor and ephemeral streams. A series of relevant descriptive attributes (water boundary, vegetation presence, land-cover, upland boundary and local geomorphology) is initially selected from existing literature to describe the presence of riparian zones. Spatially explicit estimates of these attributes are obtained using available Earth Observation data and pan-European thematic datasets. Finally, the information layers are combined through an aggregation system that assigns a degree of belonging to the riparian zone class using two fuzzy membership functions to evaluate respectively water influence and presence of natural vegetation. Riparian zones with no hydrological connection are also incorporated in by the model based on functional considerations. The distribution of stream riparian zones was derived and mapped for the whole of Europe at fine resolution. Modelled riparian zones extend for around 91,000 km2, considering the entire range of low to high membership to the riparian class. A characterization of land-cover types was derived based on Corine Land Cover 2000 data, showing that European riparian zones are strongly dominated by forest habitats. Accuracy assessment was performed using independent ecological datasets and visual validation, indicating producer accuracy is equal to 84.5%1.3% and user accuracy to 72.6%5.8% at 95% confidence level. The proposed model and output can represent valuable information for large-scale research activities of riparian environments and to support national and supra-national conservation programs.JRC.H.1-Water Resource

    Pan-European distribution model of riparian zones of currents based on Earth observation data from multiple sources

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    Los ecosistemas de agua dulce se encuentran entre los más degradados y amenazados a nivel mundial. Por lo tanto, la necesidad de una evaluación sistemática de los hábitats ribereños está bien documentada. Las zonas ribereñas son especialmente importantes debido a la gran variedad de ecosistemas y servicios sociales que pueden proporcionar, al mismo tiempo que recientemente han adquirido un papel importante en la nueva política europea de biodiversidad. En este contexto, la necesidad de recopilar información espacial sobre la extensión, distribución y características de las zonas ribereñas es clara. Este artículo presenta el desarrollo de un modelo novedoso para derivar la distribución geográfica y las características básicas de las zonas ribereñas fluviales en Europa, incluidos los sistemas de llanuras aluviales y las redes ribereñas de corrientes menores y efímeras.. Una serie de atributos descriptivos relevantes (límite de agua, presencia de vegetación, cobertura terrestre, límite de tierras altas y geomorfología local) se seleccionan inicialmente de la literatura existente para describir la presencia de zonas ribereñas. Se obtienen estimaciones espacialmente explícitas de estos atributos utilizando los datos de observación de la Tierra disponibles y los conjuntos de datos temáticos paneuropeos. Finalmente, las capas de información se combinan a través de un sistema de agregación que asigna un grado de pertenencia a la clase de zona ribereña utilizando dos funciones de membresía difusa para evaluar la influencia del agua y la presencia de vegetación natural, respectivamente. Las zonas ribereñas sin conexión hidrológica también se incorporan en el modelo basado en consideraciones funcionales. La distribución de las zonas ribereñas de la corriente fue derivada y mapeada para toda Europa en buena resolución. km 2 , considerando todo el rango de membresía baja a alta de la clase ribereña. Se derivó una caracterización de los tipos de cobertura terrestre basada en los datos de Corine Land Cover 2000, que muestran que las zonas ribereñas europeas están fuertemente dominadas por los hábitats forestales . La evaluación de precisión se realizó utilizando conjuntos de datos ecológicos independientes y validación visual, lo que indica que la precisión del productor es igual a 84.5 ± 1.3% y la precisión del usuario a 72.6 ± 5.8% con un nivel de confianza del 95%. El modelo y los resultados propuestos pueden representar información valiosa para actividades de investigación a gran escala de ambientes ribereños y para apoyar programas de conservación nacionales y supranacionales.Freshwater ecosystems are among the most degraded and threatened globally. A need for systematic assessment of riverine habitats is thus well-documented. Riparian zones are especially important due to the large array of ecosystem and social services they can provide, while also recently gaining a major role in the new European biodiversity policy. In this context, the necessity to gather spatial information on extent, distribution and characteristics of the riparian zones is clear. This paper presents the development of a novel model to derive geographical distribution and basic characteristics of stream riparian zones in Europe, including both river-floodplain systems and the riparian networks of minor and ephemeral streams. A series of relevant descriptive attributes (water boundary, vegetation presence, land-cover, upland boundary and local geomorphology) is initially selected from the existing literature to describe the presence of riparian zones. Spatially explicit estimates of these attributes are obtained using available Earth Observation data and pan-European thematic datasets. Finally, the information layers are combined through an aggregation system that assigns a degree of belonging to the riparian zone class using two fuzzy membership functions to evaluate water influence and presence of natural vegetation, respectively. Riparian zones with no hydrological connection are also incorporated in by the model based on functional considerations. The distribution of stream riparian zones was derived and mapped for the whole of Europe at fine resolution. Modelled riparian zones extend for approximately 91,000 km2, considering the entire range of low to high membership to the riparian class. A characterization of land-cover types was derived based on Corine Land Cover 2000 data, showing that European riparian zones are strongly dominated by forest habitats. Accuracy assessment was performed using independent ecological datasets and visual validation, indicating that producer accuracy is equal to 84.5 ± 1.3% and user accuracy to 72.6 ± 5.8% at 95% confidence level. The proposed model and output can represent valuable information for large-scale research activities of riparian environments and to support national and supra-national conservation programmes
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