Instructional Models for Course-Based Research Experience (CRE) Teaching

A report on research that explicates three models of pedagogical practice that underpin and characterize inquiry instruction in a course-based research experience.

A System Innovation Approach for Science-Stakeholder Interface: Theory and Application to Water-Land-Food-Energy Nexus

The Water-Food-Energy Nexus can support a general model of sustainable development, balancing resources with increasing economic/productive expectations, as e.g., in agriculture. We synthesise lessons from Greece's practical and research experience, identify knowledge and application gaps, and propose a novel conceptual framework to tackle these challenges. Thessaly (Central Greece), the country's driest region and largest agricultural supplier is used as an example. The area faces a number of water quantity and quality issues, ambitious production-economic objectives, continuous (historically) drought and flood events, conflicts, administrative and economic issues, under serious climate change impacts. A detailed assessment of the current situation is carried out, covering all these aspects, for the first time in an integrated way. Collaboration gaps among different stakeholders are identified as the biggest impediment to socially acceptable actions. For the first time, to our knowledge, the Nexus is set as a keystone to develop a novel framework to reverse the situation and achieve sustainable management under socially acceptable long-term visions. The proposed framework is based on Systems' Theory, innovation, uses a multi-disciplinary platform to bring together all relevant stakeholders, provides scientific support and commitment, and makes use of technological advances for the system's improvement.

Operationalising a real-time research ethics approach: supporting ethical mindfulness in agriculture-nutrition-health research in Malawi

Background There have been notable investments in large multi-partner research programmes across the agriculture-nutrition-health (ANH) nexus. These studies often involve human participants and commonly require research ethics review. These ANH studies are complex and can raise ethical issues that need pre-field work, ethical oversight and also need an embedded process that can identify, characterise and manage ethical issues as the research work develops, as such more embedded and dynamic ethics processes are needed. This work builds on notions of ‘ethics in practice’ by developing an approach to facilitate ethical reflection within large research programmes. This study explores the application of a novel ‘real-time research ethics approach’ (RTREA) and how this can support ethical mindfulness. This involves embedding ethical analysis and decision-making within research implementation, with a continuous dialogue between participants and researchers. The aim is to improve ethical responsiveness and participant experience, which in turn may ethically support adherence and retention. In this case study, a bioethics team (BT) was embedded in a community-based randomised, controlled trial conducted in rural Malawi, titled the ‘Addressing Hidden Hunger with Agronomy’. To identify ethical issues, the researchers conducted ten focus group discussions, fourteen in-depth interviews with key informants, two workshops, observed two sensitisation and three activity meetings conducted by the trial team, and analysed fifteen reports from pre-trial to trial implementation. Results The RTREA facilitated the identification of social and ethical concerns and made researchers aware of participants’ ‘lived research experience’. To address concerns and experiences, the BT worked with researchers to facilitate conversation spaces where social and ethical issues were discussed. Conversation spaces were designed to create partnerships and promote participatory methods to capture trial participants’ (TPs) perspectives and experiences. Conclusions The use of RTREA showed the value of real-time and continuous engagement between TPs and researchers. These real-time processes could be embedded to complement traditional ethical guidance and expert opinions. A deeper engagement appeared to support greater operationalising of principles of inclusion, empowerment, and participant autonomy and supported researchers ‘ethical mindfulness’ which in turn may support instrumental outcomes of high recruitment, retention, and adherence levels.

Electronic voting: domestic research experience

The article is devoted to the analysis of the domestic experience of studying electronic voting. The authors combine all points of view on the concept of electronic voting into two main approaches. The narrow approach focuses on the process of submitting votes electronically. In a broad approach, the concept of “electronic voting” includes the process of voter registration, processing of ballots and counting of votes by electronic means, even if the voting itself was carried out in the traditional way). The article presents the main advantages of electronic voting, a number of problems are noted: technical; value; social.

Complete Genome Sequences of Four Putatively Antibiotic-Producing Bacteria Isolated from Soil in Arkansas, USA

Soil bacteria can be a valuable source of antimicrobial compounds. Here, we report the complete genomes of four soil bacteria that were isolated by undergraduate microbiology students as part of a course-based research experience. These genomes were assembled using a hybrid approach combining paired-end Illumina reads with Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION reads.