Adam Stefanile

Designing and delivering an oral poster presentation is becoming very common for undergraduate students to showcase their research, whether it be in conferences, symposiums, and/or poster sessions; however, there is limited published evidence on how to successfully develop and make a presentation. This article demonstrates how undergraduate students can prepare, and eventually present, their research by effectively engaging their audience, and it also provides qualitative evidence of how successfully undergraduate students have achieved these goals. Among the advice provided to undergraduate students, as outlined in this paper, 10 easy steps are recom- mended to help undergraduate students present their research in a novel and engaging way to enhance the impact of their oral presentation. Steps 1–5 focus on preparing undergraduate students to design their posters, and steps 6–10 focus on presenting their posters.

Given the myriad of free, online genomic websites, database, and tools for learning genomics, it is realistic and relevant to teach genomics in urban secondary schools in a way that addresses student interests and needs. Genomics is pragmatic and appropriate to introduce to urban secondary school level, and it is important to move beyond the traditional teaching of single Mendalian traits, which limits the level of content and pedagogy in urban classrooms that involve learning individual and societal real-world problems.

Undergraduate students in the field of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) are regularly encouraged and instructed to develop and write an original research paper in their field of expertise. Some undergraduate students, however, may lack the essential skills and strategies to write a research paper/manuscript of a quality suitable for possible publication in a peer-reviewed journal. A sixteen-week writing course was developed for STEM undergraduate students to improve their presentation and writing skills toward increasing their chances of publishing a research article in a peer-reviewed journal. This paper is a report describing a scientific undergraduate writing course (established across a variety of disciplinary STEM fields) and its evaluation based on scoring rubrics and the instructor’s oral feedback advice to the students. It was designed and implemented using teaching strategies aligned with pedagogical and learning theories addressing three domains: developmental planning, pedagogical planning, and implementation planning. Pedagogical strategies utilized the Visual, Aural, Read/Write, Kinesthetic (VARK) model and multimodal skills. Implementation of the course content includes using an academic student writing center, oral presentations of the student’s research project for the midterm and final course evaluations, and ongoing constructive feedback from the instructor. Undergraduate students showed an increase in their understanding of developing and presenting their proposed research in their respective fields. These strategies have demonstrated a positive outcome in reaching the course goals for STEM undergraduate students during this initial phase of the course development and can be designed and adapted across other academic disciplines. We urge others to implement a similar format for undergraduate STEM courses.

In the 21st century, post coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, virology has been, and continues to be, in the public eye. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic globally has affected political, economic, social, policy, and health aspects. Transformative breakthroughs in the field of virology such as disease prevention, vaccines, drug therapy, and cancer research have continued to improve all aspects of human health. Yet, with all these breakthroughs, high school curriculum and pedagogy have not adequately kept up with the majority of basic virology principles. In today’s modern world, post COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to consider introducing basic and modern principles of virology to high school students. In this paper, a systematic literature review was performed to identify, assess, and evaluate high school biology and health curricula to see whether modern principles of virology were included in the curriculum, as reported by the selected scientific publications. This study also highlights several challenges for implementing modern principles of virology to pave the way for further research.