An idea to explore: How an interdisciplinary undergraduate course exploring a global health challenge in molecular detail enabled science communication and collaboration in diverse audiences

Abstract

Communication and collaboration are key science competencies that support sharing of scientific knowledge with experts and non-experts alike. On the one hand, they facilitate interdisciplinary conversations between students, educators, and researchers, while on the other they improve public awareness, enable informed choices, and impact policy decisions. Herein, we describe an interdisciplinary undergraduate course focused on using data from various bioinformatics data resources to explore the molecular underpinnings of diabetes mellitus (Types 1 and 2) and introducing students to science communication. Building on course materials and original student-generated artifacts, a series of collaborative activities engaged students, educators, researchers, healthcare professionals and community members in exploring, learning about, and discussing the molecular bases of diabetes. These collaborations generated novel educational materials and approaches to learning and presenting complex ideas about major global health challenges in formats accessible to diverse audiences.

Keywords: Global Health; Protein Data Bank; collaboration; community education; diabetes mellitus; educational resource development; interdisciplinary course; molecular structures; open education resource; science communication.

Figure 1.

Science communication activities pertaining to diabetes encompassed by four activities. Activity 1 (pink shaded box): Undergraduate interdisciplinary seminar course; Activity 2 (yellow): Development of PDB-101 “Teach” and “Learn” materials (including a collaborative curriculum development with high school educators); Activity 3 (orange): Repackaging student authored articles, for publication in PDB-101 “Global Health” pages; and Activity 4 (green): Development of Peer-Led community education materials to increase awareness about causes, monitoring, and treatment of diabetes in molecular detail. Dashed arrows represent reuse/repackaging of communication materials. Outlined text boxes denote activities engaging students (blue), activities developed in collaboration with high school educators (red), and activities developed in collaboration with community members (green).