Transformative Interventions in Cell Biology: The Development and Use of Instructor/Student-Interactive Demonstrations of Key Cell Biology Concepts

In Cell Biology, a sophomore/junior undergraduate-level high-enrollment core course, students are expected to develop a broad and detailed understanding of the functioning of eukaryotic cells. For example, some of the more challenging biological concepts include machinery involved in the replication and translational processes, protein trafficking/orientation in membranes, as well as both G protein-coupled receptor and receptor tyrosine kinase signal transduction pathways. In this instructional article, we describe prior published reports of the use of interactive demonstrations of several of these key biological concepts in the classroom. Furthermore, we narrate our efforts to integrate several of these disparate evidence-based techniques (EBTs) with supplementation of our own demonstrations into a common cell biology curriculum. We have adapted these EBTs to suit large lecture classrooms (200+) as well as extended it to an online course format. We expect the hands-on nature of these learning activities will facilitate active learning of these challenging concepts in the short-term, while helping narrow achievement gaps for marginalized students, increasing student retention in majors such as Cell and Molecular Biology, and lastly for enhancing student success in post-graduate career goals over the long-term. Our overall goal is to share our own experiences deploying these approaches in-person and online that could potentially lead to a more widespread adoption of these learning props in undergraduate cell biology education as well as to stimulate research interests in evaluating the effectiveness of this unique and expanded collection of prop demonstration activities for undergraduate cell biology courses.