A student-centered seminar course as a complementary approach to a traditional journal club

Graduate physiology programs strive to provide students with in-depth expertise in a particular academic discipline, often facilitating this process in the form of a departmental seminar course. Within the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California Irvine (UCI), students are required to attend a seminar course, most often designed as a journal club, each quarter until they are ready to graduate. While this format may work well in departments where research topics are closely related, it has historically been less successful in UCI's Department of Physiology and Biophysics, where wide-ranging interests make for little overlap in foundational knowledge, limiting meaningful engagement with the material or with peers in the class. In this paper, we describe a complementary approach of developing a syllabus around student interests and covering topics that are critical for student success but often omitted from graduate curricula, such as interview skills, grant writing, and scientific communication. Results from our pre-class survey motivated this approach to the class, and our retrospective survey demonstrated the substantial differences in student engagement, enthusiasm, and perceived benefits of this course relative to the journal club style course. We hope that the success of our course may serve as an exemplar for strategies to engage students more effectively and provide critical training in diverse skillsets that will help students after graduation.

COVID-19 as an Opportunity to Expand the Instructional Portfolio of STEM Librarians

The pivot to online teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic enabled science and engineering librarians at Vanderbilt University to expand their teaching roles within graduate-level courses in biomedical engineering, chemistry, and physics. In addition to addressing traditional information literacy skills related to information retrieval and resource evaluation, these new lessons addressed important science process skills such as academic reading, responsible conduct of research, and research data management. A facility with cloud-based teaching tools such as Zoom breakout rooms and Excel for Microsoft 365 allowed for engaging instructional experiences, even within synchronous online instructional environments. By integrating these topics into the graduate curricula, these guest lectures supported the professional development of early career graduate students and deepened relationships with the course instructors of record.

Effective image visualization for publications – a workflow using open access tools and concepts

Today, 25% of figures in biomedical publications contain images of various types, e.g. photos, light or electron microscopy images, x-rays, or even sketches or drawings. Despite being widely used, published images may be ineffective or illegible since details are not visible, information is missing or they have been inappropriately processed. The vast majority of such imperfect images can be attributed to the lack of experience of the authors as undergraduate and graduate curricula lack courses on image acquisition, ethical processing, and visualization. Here we present a step-by-step image processing workflow for effective and ethical image presentation. The workflow is aimed to allow novice users with little or no prior experience in image processing to implement the essential steps towards publishing images. The workflow is based on the open source software Fiji, but its principles can be applied with other software packages. All image processing steps discussed here, and complementary suggestions for image presentation, are shown in an accessible “cheat sheet”-style format, enabling wide distribution, use, and adoption to more specific needs.

Effective image visualization for publications – a workflow using open access tools and concepts

Today, 25% of figures in biomedical publications contain images of various types, e.g. photos, light or electron microscopy images, x-rays, or even sketches or drawings. Despite being widely used, published images may be ineffective or illegible since details are not visible, information is missing or they have been inappropriately processed. The vast majority of such imperfect images can be attributed to the lack of experience of the authors as undergraduate and graduate curricula lack courses on image acquisition, ethical processing, and visualization. Here we present a step-by-step image processing workflow for effective and ethical image presentation. The workflow is aimed to allow novice users with little or no prior experience in image processing to implement the essential steps towards publishing images. The workflow is based on the open source software Fiji, but its principles can be applied with other software packages. All image processing steps discussed here, and complementary suggestions for image presentation, are shown in an accessible “cheat sheet”-style format, enabling wide distribution, use, and adoption to more specific needs.

Rethinking the Course Syllabus: Considerations for Promoting Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

Introduction: Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are receiving considerable attention in higher education. Within psychology, the American Psychological Association has highlighted the importance of cultural diversity in both undergraduate and graduate curricula and charged educators with facilitating the development of cultural competence among learners. Statement of the Problem: Many resources have been developed to help promote EDI within higher education. The resources developed have mainly focused on the curricula and pedagogical approaches, yet the syllabus remains overlooked with few guidelines available to educators. Literature Review: We offer several considerations informed by theoretical frameworks and best practices in the discipline and suggestions for the successful implementation of EDI in the syllabus. Teaching Implications: This article provides a comprehensive and useful guide for developing a syllabus that assists with the integration of EDI, as the syllabus is the first opportunity for faculty to communicate their philosophy, expectations, requirements, and other course information. Conclusion: Infusing EDI in the syllabus is essential for promoting an inclusive learning environment and is conducive to establishing goals related to cultural competence.

Learning gaps among statistical competencies for clinical and translational science learners

Introduction: Statistical literacy is essential in clinical and translational science (CTS). Statistical competencies have been published to guide coursework design and selection for graduate students in CTS. Here, we describe common elements of graduate curricula for CTS and identify gaps in the statistical competencies. Methods: We surveyed statistics educators using e-mail solicitation sent through four professional organizations. Respondents rated the degree to which 24 educational statistical competencies were included in required and elective coursework in doctoral-level and master’s-level programs for CTS learners. We report competency results from institutions with Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs), reflecting institutions that have invested in CTS training. Results: There were 24 CTSA-funded respondents representing 13 doctoral-level programs and 23 master’s-level programs. For doctoral-level programs, competencies covered extensively in required coursework for all doctoral-level programs were basic principles of probability and hypothesis testing, understanding the implications of selecting appropriate statistical methods, and computing appropriate descriptive statistics. The only competency extensively covered in required coursework for all master’s-level programs was understanding the implications of selecting appropriate statistical methods. The least covered competencies included understanding the purpose of meta-analysis and the uses of early stopping rules in clinical trials. Competencies considered to be less fundamental and more specialized tended to be covered less frequently in graduate courses. Conclusion: While graduate courses in CTS tend to cover many statistical fundamentals, learning gaps exist, particularly for more specialized competencies. Educational material to fill these gaps is necessary for learners pursuing these activities.

Teaching and learning about teaching and learning: The Mastery Rubric for the Master Level (MR-ML)

The Mastery Rubric is a curriculum development and evaluation tool. It articulates the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) of a given curriculum, together with the developmental trajectory that learning these KSAs is intended to follow. Mastery Rubrics have focused on graduate and post-graduate curricula, and utilize the European Guild Structure for staging growth and development of KSAs. Bloom’s taxonomy is also essential for describing the performance, and performance levels, in each stage. A defining characteristic of the Mastery Rubric is the Master level: the Master is qualified, with evidence, to take a learner from novice through to Master. However, the transition from competent independent performer of a set of KSAs to Master is not addressed in any of the Mastery Rubrics to date. This article describes three levels through which any instructor can progress in order to generate evidence they are qualified at the Master level for any Mastery Rubric, even those that have already been published to include a (single) Master level. These three levels describe the evidence that can be observed to represent early, middle, and late Master capabilities in terms of teaching, and assessing learning, in students and trainees. Two new Mastery Rubrics (MRs) have recently been completed, and neither has a Master level: one for Bioinformatics (MR-Bi) and one for the Nurse Practitioner (NR-NP). Although this new Mastery Rubric for the Master Level (MR-ML) can be used with all of the existing Mastery Rubrics to characterize the development of the Master’s engagement with theories and practicalities of learning, we use the MR-Bi and MR-NP to illustrate how the MR-ML can work with these two new MRs, and how individuals in any field can compile their evidence of the specific abilities to diagnose problems exhibited by those at earlier stages, devise remediating activities for those problems, and assess the result.

Differences in salaries and employment security between tertiary education graduates and their determinants: Evidence from Poland

This article verifies empirically differences in salaries and employment security across 140 thousand graduates of 231 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Poland. HEIs according to the clustering procedure, results were grouped into four clusters: "Underdogs", "Middlers", "Aspirants", and "Winners". Then, a contingency analysis was done, which proved dependence between belongingness to cluster and: localization (weak dependence), profile of HEIs’ graduate curricula (medium), as well as ownership type (strong). Discussion of the results and conclusions are presented.