NSF Award
1044898
This project creates new physical models and digital instructional materials to help students understand photosynthesis, the process by which living organisms trap energy from the sun in food. During photosynthesis, green plants, algae and some microbes fix carbon dioxide from the air into organic molecules, the food upon which all living things depend. By removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it also helps to control the build-up of this greenhouse gas. In addition some molecules made this way become biofuel, a renewable source of energy. Therefore this is an important process to understand. The models are used in a variety of undergraduate courses along with those previously created and tested by the SUN (Students Understanding eNergy) Project. Together these instructional materials allow undergraduates to enact both photosynthesis and cellular respiration, the process by which all living things move stored energy from food to ATP, the chemical currency required to power life. These topics are difficult for undergraduates to understand. They involve electrons moving along a particular path in protein complexes found in two cellular compartments, the chloroplast and the mitochondrion. A team from University of Wisconsin at Madison, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, The Scripps Research Institute, and Milwaukee School of Engineering (the lead institution) develops scale models that accurately represent the structures of the proteins involved in photosynthesis. It also creates web-based instructional materials that integrate knowledge of the biological structures with their functions. The models and digital learning tools are tested in cell biology, biochemistry, and physics classes at the cooperating institutions, and then refined for broader distribution. Ultimately they improve student learning. They also impact student persistence as science majors nationwide, since many students find these abstract concepts to be so difficult that they change their major. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts toward Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education.
