# 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](/teaching/phage-discovery) 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](https://phagesdb.org/). More about the national program is at [seaphages.org](https://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](/research/publications/10-1128-jmbe-00313-25/) (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](/research/publications/10-3389-feduc-2024-1442318/) (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](/research/publications/10-3389-feduc-2024-1442306/) (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](/research/publications/10-3389-feduc-2023-1279921/) (Frontiers in Education, 2023). How experienced instructors assess and grade students in research courses.
- [Instructional Models for Course-Based Research Experience (CRE) Teaching](/research/publications/10-1187-cbe-21-03-0057/) (CBE Life Sciences Education, 2022). Three models for how instructors teach research courses.

### Classroom materials

- [Writing Microbiology Resource Announcements (MRA)](/research/publications/10-25334-b5bs-f125/) (QUBES Educational Resources, 2024). A classroom guide for writing a genome announcement as a group.
- [Understanding Restriction Enzyme Digests](/research/publications/10-25334-8cxe-6883/) (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](/research/publications/10-1128-mra-00888-24/) |
| Loca | *Microbacterium foliorum* | From a shopping-cart handle swab, Erath County; 17,475 bp, 25 genes | [2022](/research/publications/10-1128-mra-00783-22/) |
| Fizzles | *Microbacterium foliorum* | Anthill soil, Erath County; 62,078 bp, 104 genes | [2022](/research/publications/10-1128-mra-01077-21/) |
| IndyLu | *Microbacterium foliorum* | Erath County soil; 41,958 bp, 71 genes, one tRNA | [2021](/research/publications/10-1128-mra-01079-21/) |
| Joy99 | *Mycobacterium smegmatis* | Annotated by high school students at a partner school; 59,837 bp, 97 genes | [2021](/research/publications/10-1128-mra-00556-21/) |
| Tripl3t and Zeuska | *Mycobacterium smegmatis* | Annotated by high school students at partner schools; about 53,600 bp each | [2021](/research/publications/10-1128-mra-00558-21/) |
| Finny | *Microbacterium foliorum* | 40,313 bp, 63 genes | [2019](/research/publications/10-1128-mra-01039-19/) |
| Ryadel | *Mycobacterium smegmatis* | Cluster O, elongated head; 72,658 bp, 132 genes | [2019](/research/publications/10-1128-mra-01594-18/) |
| Arlo | *Mycobacterium smegmatis* | Erath County soil; 52,960 bp, 96 genes, cluster A1 | [2018](/research/publications/10-1128-mra-01242-18/) |

Every phage the program has found, published or not, is in the [phage table](/research/phages). The full list of papers is under [publications](/research/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](/research/publications/10-3390-ijerph22071139/) (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.