Science education research
Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) put real research questions into regular courses, so every enrolled student does research rather than a few in a faculty lab. This research area studies how those courses are taught, assessed and sustained, much of it with the faculty community of SEA-PHAGES, the HHMI program in which students find and sequence new bacteriophages. It also covers the research students produce: the phage genome announcements they co-author. The Tarleton phage hunting course itself, with what students do each semester and the full discovery guide, is on the Phage Discovery Program page.
Course-based research as a subject of study#
SEA-PHAGES is a large, long-running CURE: students at many member schools isolate phages, and every phage goes into the shared database, PhagesDB. More about the national program is at seaphages.org. Because so many faculty teach the same research at different institutions, the program is a natural place to ask how research courses work: how instructors teach them, how they grade research whose answer is not known in advance, what it means to be both a scientist and a teacher, and how a community of faculty keeps improving a shared course. The papers below come out of that work.
- Science communication tools: rubrics for generating posters and manuscripts that are authentic to the practice of science (Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, 2026). Two rubrics for grading student posters and short papers in research courses, written by about 100 SEA-PHAGES faculty.
- An inclusive Research and Education Community (iREC) model to facilitate undergraduate science education reform (Frontiers in Education, 2024). How the SEA-PHAGES faculty community adopts and improves research courses over time, from interviews with over 100 members.
- The professional identity of STEM faculty as instructors of course-based research experiences (Frontiers in Education, 2024). What 97 instructors of research courses say about being a scientist and a teacher at the same time.
- Models of classroom assessment for course-based research experiences (Frontiers in Education, 2023). How experienced instructors assess and grade students in research courses.
- Instructional Models for Course-Based Research Experience (CRE) Teaching (CBE Life Sciences Education, 2022). Three models for how instructors teach research courses.
Classroom materials#
- Writing Microbiology Resource Announcements (MRA) (QUBES Educational Resources, 2024). A classroom guide for writing a genome announcement as a group.
- Understanding Restriction Enzyme Digests (QUBES Educational Resources, 2021). Four classroom exercises on restriction enzyme digests and why they are used to screen phage DNA.
Genome announcements students co-author#
A CURE ends in results that others can use. In the Tarleton program, once a phage genome is sequenced and annotated, the class writes it up as a short genome announcement in Microbiology Resource Announcements, with the students as co-authors. The published announcements from this program and its partners:
| Phage | Host | Notes | Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Godfather | Microbacterium foliorum | Erath County soil; 17,452 bp, 24 genes, cluster EE | 2025 |
| Loca | Microbacterium foliorum | From a shopping-cart handle swab, Erath County; 17,475 bp, 25 genes | 2022 |
| Fizzles | Microbacterium foliorum | Anthill soil, Erath County; 62,078 bp, 104 genes | 2022 |
| IndyLu | Microbacterium foliorum | Erath County soil; 41,958 bp, 71 genes, one tRNA | 2021 |
| Joy99 | Mycobacterium smegmatis | Annotated by high school students at a partner school; 59,837 bp, 97 genes | 2021 |
| Tripl3t and Zeuska | Mycobacterium smegmatis | Annotated by high school students at partner schools; about 53,600 bp each | 2021 |
| Finny | Microbacterium foliorum | 40,313 bp, 63 genes | 2019 |
| Ryadel | Mycobacterium smegmatis | Cluster O, elongated head; 72,658 bp, 132 genes | 2019 |
| Arlo | Mycobacterium smegmatis | Erath County soil; 52,960 bp, 96 genes, cluster A1 | 2018 |
Every phage the program has found, published or not, is in the phage table. The full list of papers is under publications.
Related: phage therapy#
Phages may become a next generation of treatment for antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. A survey of US healthcare providers' views of phage therapy (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2025) found that 49 percent of 196 clinicians knew about it and 56 percent would consider using it.