GMC: Genes, Mutations and Cancer – Group Concept Map Development

It has been shown that active learning strategies used in the classroom can increase student learning and retention of information. We generated an active learning exercise that can be used in the classroom to explore the relationship between genes, mutations, cancer, and cancer therapeutics. The learning objectives for this exercise include defining and understanding the functional relationships between genes that regulate cell division, major types of mutations, and the onset of cancer. The active learning exercise begins with a take home quiz to define terms related to the information covered during the lecture portion of the class. Students are then divided into groups to generate a concept map that displays the interrelationships between these terms. Each group is then instructed to exchange their concept maps with another group, evaluate the map for accuracy, and identify targets for inhibiting or activating drug therapies. The lesson plan was implemented in undergraduate biology courses at two public universities. Survey data indicate that students perceived the activity helped increase their knowledge and understanding of the learning objectives. Citation: Katzman SD, Horne JH, Baral SS, Choe KP, Eich E. 2020. GMC: Genes, Mutations and Cancer – Group Concept Map Development. CourseSource. https://doi.org/10.24918/cs.2020. 1 Editor: Jennifer Hood-DeGrenier, Worcester State University Received: 5/13/2019; Accepted: 11/12/2019; Published: 1/27/2020 Copyright: © 2020 Katzman, Horne, Baral, Choe, and Eich. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. There are no copyrighted materials included in this manuscript. All figures and tables were generated by the authors’ based on IRB approved assessment from various classes at Georgia Gwinnett College (IRB #17044), or determined to be compliant with the University of New Orleans and federal guidelines (meeting the standard for exempt) (IRB# 9Mar18). Conflict of Interest and Funding Statement: The creation of the active learning exercise was made possible by the Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching and the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning. The authors attended the Gulf Coast Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching in 2017 and generated the teaching activity while at this conference. Implementation of the active learning exercise in the classroom, data collection and manuscript preparation were not funded by any outside sources. None of the authors has a financial, personal, or professional conflict of interest related to this work. Supporting Materials: S1. Genes, Mutations and Cancer Pre-class assignment; S2. Genes, Mutations and Cancer Pre-class assignment answer key; S3. Genes, Mutations and Cancer Example assessment questions; and S4. Genes, Mutations and Cancer Example assessment questions answer key. *Correspondence to: 1000 University Center Lane, Office: W-3227 Lawrenceville, GA 30043. Email: skatzman@ggc.edu CourseSource | www.coursesource. org 2020 | Volume 07 1 Lesson