| NIH Biotechnologist |
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 The goal of this Phase I Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) application is to evaluate strategies for updating, improving, and repurposing Biotechnologist, a set of supplementary instructional materials for high school and early undergraduate education developed by the nonprofit Center for Image Processing in Education (CIPE) with funding from the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) (NSF grant numbers DUE-9454520 and DUE-9752101). Biotechnologist offers ten lessons in which students use image processing software developed at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to analyze laboratory data derived from medical, biological, and genetic research. The lessons in Biotechnologist feature real problem-solving scenarios encountered by scientists and technicians working in agriculture, forensics, pharmaceuticals, genetics and other fields. Nationally disseminated to high schools and colleges since its introduction in 1999, Biotechnologist’s model of immersing students in authentic data exploration holds great promise to invigorate students’ interest in health science, genetics, and biotechnology. The proposed NIH Biotechnologist: Authentic Explorations of Biotechnology, Genetics, and Genomics in Health Science project will produce a model lesson—“Restriction Mapping: Mapping restriction sites on a plasmid”—derived from the original Biotechnologist product. Designed to be a supplementary activity for high school and college instruction, the lesson will be restructured using the Understanding by Design methodology of Wiggins and McTighe (2005) and other relevant techniques for targeting learning experiences at relevant “big ideas” and educational standards; updated with current content material relevant to the mission of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); enhanced with technologies that promote customizability by instructors and interactivity for learners; and packaged in an eLearning format to facilitate testing and improve its usability for instructors and students. The lesson will introduce the learner to restriction mapping in an engaging manner, provide online tools that allow the learner to explore the topic by conducting a basic science experiment, analyze data gathered during the experiment, reflect on what they have learned, and integrate their discoveries with narrative accounts of the discovery of similar knowledge. The lesson will also serve as a prototype for a full set of materials to be developed with funding from a Phase II SBIR grant. Updating, improvement, and repurposing of Biotechnologist will be conducted by Science Approach, a for-profit corporation formed by staff members from CIPE in 2003. As part of an ongoing merger with Science Approach, CIPE will transfer the rights to Biotechnologist and other relevant technologies to the project. Accomplishing the following Phase I project milestones will further the proposed goals:
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