Collaborative Undergraduate Biology Education

CUBE is a community initiative to promote

collaborative education, research and outreach in

biology. The objective is to establish functional

linkages across the education spectrum (primary

school to research centers). 

CUBE actively engages young researchers at the

undergraduate level with the nature of scientific

inquiry through its essential component of

collaboration. It is an effort to convert undergraduate

college laboratories into contemporary, open-ended,

interactive, inquiry-driven and collaborative research

laboratories. Our aim is to design 'functional learning

ecologies' by means of simple model systems to

facilitate collaborative undergraduate research in the

frontiers of biology.India

Background

Indian science lives or dies in its 26,000 undergraduate

colleges. Some of these are the top 100 or so called good

colleges which are cited almost every where, while most

(>20,000) are the average/ small undergraduate colleges.

We contend that a functional networking of these colleges

potential resource will be generated if all these colleges

are functionally networked to recreate/ restructure the

nature and practice of undergraduate biology.

Challenges

• Absence of institutional mechanisms for any conscious

collaborative approach in teaching and learning in

undergraduate science education in India .

• Lack of regular interactions between undergraduate

students and science professionals, especially in small

cities and towns.

• Lack of widespread professional development programs

for undergraduate teachers

• Lack of experiential learning opportunities for students

Solution

Our suggested remedy is to empower teachers of more than 26,000 colleges and 504 universities in India by enabling functional networking among themselves, and with research scientists, through a large number of collaborative undergraduate research programs using the state-of-the-art social networking technology.

CUBE NetworkFunctional networking between the Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education (Mumbai, India), 15 colleges from Mumbai) and another 4 colleges (each from Delhi, Goa, Manipal, Ratnagiri).

A total of 20 undergraduate college hubs and many more links being initiated thereafter.

CUBE Summer 2012 Initiative

The CUBE Summer 2012 created a network of research and resource centres throughout

India. The first phase of the initiative was a 5 week hands-on research program at the

Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Mumbai (April 23-May 30, 2012).

Introducing Zebrafish

Join CUBE

We invite you to be a part of this endeavor

aimed at transforming undergraduate

biology education in India.

One simple way you can do this is to simplify your

research so that it could be done in any

undergraduate college lab with minimum resources.

You Can!

Start a CUBE club

Become a virtual mentor

Share ideas and intellectual resources

Functionally network with us through

http://www.metastudio.org/cube

Write to us to become a member of the CUBE

community.