FOME 2024 Keynote 1: The Tiny Earth Project: Engaging students through experiential learning

NOTE: Minutes 5:33 to 9:24 of the video are overlapping breakout discussions that were incidentally recorded. Feel free to skip over this content or navigate to the rest of the presentation using the transcript.

Presenters: Dr. Laura Pickell, Dr. Anil Gollupadi, Department of Health Sciences, Carleton University

Overview: Experiential learning immerses learners in tasks that are authentic to our disciplines. In science, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) engage learners in real, original research. CUREs have been shown to improve student success and reduce equity gaps, improving retention and diversity in the sciences. In this session, we will describe our experiences implementing a global initiative called Tiny Earth into an introductory microbiology course. Tiny Earth aims to solve the antimicrobial resistance crisis by student-sourcing antibiotic discovery from microbes in the soil and addresses the challenge of retention in science. Our students’ engagement in the experience was beyond our expectations. It opened up opportunities for independent studies, summer internships, volunteering and further adaptation for a high school mini course. We will share our students’ experiences with the program and will invite participants to consider migrating their own courses toward more experiential experiences for students.