A course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) affords students the opportunity to do hands-on research while enabling faculty to generate data. Here, I describe a CURE conducted in Foundations in Neuroscience & Laboratory (NEUR 127), which is team-taught by Eric Hoopfer and myself. For the students participating in the CURE described here, we aimed to expose them to the entire research process. That is, generation of an idea, development of procedure, operationally defining variables, collecting and analyzing data and communicating the project in written form. Additionally, we used the CURE to demonstrate the teamwork necessary to conduct research. For faculty, we aimed to test ideas related to our research that would hopefully lead to pilot data.
We chose to focus the CURE on the role of dopamine in the display of motivated behavior, specifically sexual motivation and mating, in female rats and female Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) as part of our Foundations in Neuroscience course. This topic enabled us to
- Use an overarching framework throughout the lab to anchor each technique module
- Illustrate the multiple roles that dopamine plays in behavior (e.g., locomotion and mating)
- Link multiple brain regions to behavior via the actions of one neurotransmitter
- Connect to many learning objectives
- Encourage students to consider which model system (flies or rats) would be best suited to the questions they developed
- Collect data that could further our research programs
To select the topic, we discussed the overlap between our areas of research. We found that fruit flies and rats have analogous brain structures that contribute to mating behavior and that dopamine likely contributes to those behaviors by acting in these brain structures. In light of the learning objectives we had for the lab course, we considered how to connect each module to the overarching framework of dopaminergic modulation of neurons involved in sexual motivation and behavior. We structured the term such that students learned the overarching research question that we would focus on, carried out several technique-based labs, and then planned and executed a research project in which they could apply the techniques learned throughout the term.
Specifically, I was interested in increasing or decreasing dopaminergic activity at specific receptor types while measuring female rat sexual motivation in a partner preference task or a paced mating behavior task. Partner preference involves offering the subject the opportunity to interact with a sexual partner or a non-sexual, social partner. Paced mating behavior is the approach and withdrawal behavior displayed by female rats during mating to control the timing of sexual stimulations. Eric was interested in developing assays in flies to measure sexual motivation in female flies and also interested in evaluating the role of dopamine in female fly sexual motivation and mating behavior.
The tasks with rats involve behaviors that are straightforward for students to learn and but also ones that are not possible to learn in the timeframe of the lab. For partner preference, students simply record the time the subject spends in a designated part of the arena. However, paced mating behavior involves multiple nuanced behaviors that take research students many weeks to learn. To enable students to carry out the experiments that would actually be useful to my research program I teach the teaching assistants (TAs) many of the skills but I also recruit members of my research team to come to the lab to collect data that is too complex and fast-paced for new students.
We meet each week with the TAs to preview the activities for the week and to instruct them on any unfamiliar techniques. One of the main tasks assigned to the TAs is to circulate during the lab period to prompt students to think more deeply about the lab module. We provide the TAs with language that they can use, such as “tell me about your drawing/response/thought process” rather than instructing them to provide an answer. We also employ an educational associate who is trained to prepare the labs. For example, the female rats have had an ovariectomy and thus need replacement hormones that are necessary for mating behavior. The educational associate is trained to do those hormone injections.
To prepare students for the final project, which is carrying out an experiment, we strategically structure each lab so that students are introduced to each part of the research process. For example, in week 1 the student activity involved differentiating between an observation and an inference so that they could then operationally define the behaviors that they would record during an open field assay to test locomotion. The students came up with several behavioral definitions that differed from what I would have provided them with, and that came in useful at the end of the term! They then carried out an open field assay to test the role of 2 dopamine antagonists on locomotor behavior in hormone-primed female rats. I performed the dopamine injections but they figured out which student would monitor the different behaviors of the rats. Data from the two lab sections was combined and shared in the next lab to prompt students to be thinking about the final projects.
Assignments were structured such that by the end of the term, students had completed each section of a journal-style manuscript (i.e., abstract, introduction, methods, results, figures and discussion sections) and received feedback on their work. The assignments were related to the particular lab module, but in some cases, fed directly into the final paper, which we called a short-er communication. For example, students created a figure for data collected during an electrophysiology lab, including the necessary information in a figure caption. They received detailed feedback from us on that figure so that they could apply the information to the figures in their short-er communication.
One challenge is that, because I work with mammals, the activities must be approved by the institutional animal care and use committee (IACUC) usually long before the students have designed the final experiment. I work hard to guide them to the questions that I have sought approval for from the IACUC. For example, they discuss a journal article that I provide that lays the groundwork for the question I would like to address. As we talk about both the structure of the article, in the context of the rubric for their short-er communication, and the content, I prompt them to consider what they know about my research, which I have presented earlier in the term and think about how the findings from the article could inform what questions the students themselves could ask. I have had much success in generating student buy-in via these guided activities.
In conclusion, we found the CURE to be very successful. Students experienced each aspect of research, from experimental design to writing up results. We intend to conduct similar CUREs in future iterations of the class.
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