Large-Scale Implementation of DNA Barcoding in Freshman Biology

There is a recent push to provide course-embedded authentic research experiences to first year undergraduates, but large course enrollments, inadequate student experience, limited instructor expertise, and departmental inertia often create seemingly insurmountable obstacles to reaching this goal. Despite these obstacles, the biology department at James Madison University (JMU) has recently implemented a semester-long DNA barcoding research experience for our large enrollment introductory biology labs. Each semester ~600 freshman students collect organisms from around campus, extract, amplify, and sequence their DNA, identify sequences using the Blue Line in CyVerse’s DNA Subway platform, and then add their findings to a georeferenced database documenting the “biodiversity of JMU”. This lab experience engages all of our freshman in authentic research, and provides them with laboratory skills, content knowledge, and experiences from a wide variety of fields including ecology, molecular biology, and bioinformatics very early in their careers. This talk will outline the content, logistics, and assessment of this course as well as the process of planning, organization, and implementation from an administrative perspective.