Backyard Chimeric Microbiomes: K-12 Participatory Science

Author

Abigail Saucier, University of New Hampshire, DurhamFollow

Date of Award

Spring 2025

Project Type

Senior Honors Thesis

College or School

COLSA

Department

Biological Sciences

Program or Major

Biology

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

First Advisor

Anna O'Brien

Abstract

The US education system has seen a recent push for more secondary school curriculum to include STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) materials and activities. Middle and high school is a pivotal time when academic and personal experiences affect the development of student attitudes towards STEM (Christensen et al., 2015; Moreno et al., 2016). Teachers often utilize hands-on activities to promote student engagement with science curriculum (Brooks & Poles, 2021; Christensen et al., 2015). Hands-on activities improve student learning, but impacts vary by type of activity. When students work towards a known outcome they can feel disconnected from the work that they are doing (McKenney et al., 2016). Instead, when students know that their work contributes to a larger project, such as in citizen science research, they participate more enthusiastically (McKenney et al., 2016; Williams et al., 2021). Citizen-science projects promote community learning simultaneously with their community contribution to a current research project and have been successfully deployed in schools (Bonney et al., 2009; McKenney et al., 2016; Williams et al., 2021).

Microbiology is a subfield of STEM education that is less well developed in secondary school curricula. Most students understand that microorganisms are involved in causing disease, but do not understand other environmental roles (Barberan et al, 2016; Fatton et al, 2021). There is a need for more “microbiology literacy” as current societal and global issues such as antibiotic resistance, allergies, greenhouse gases, and soil health all involve microbes (Timmis et al, 2019). However, much microbiology learning happens only at the collegiate level, because only these labs are equipped for proper handling of materials and waste, preventing middle and high school students from being able to experience the same kind of learning (Brooks and Poles, 2021).

The “Backyard Chimeric Microbiomes” module is intended to address both of these gaps. One of the goals of the Backyard Chimeric Microbiomes learning module is to allow students to safely explore the beneficial and harmful roles that microbes have in the environment. At the same time, the Backyard Chimeric Microbiomes module is for students to input and compare their collected data to a larger collection of data from other classrooms, showing them that their efforts are contributing to new knowledge. The experiments they will do connect to emerging questions about chimeric coalescence in microbiomes.

Recommended Citation

Saucier, Abigail, "Backyard Chimeric Microbiomes: K-12 Participatory Science" (2025). Honors Theses and Capstones. 918.
https://scholars.unh.edu/honors/918