Emily M. Wollmuth from Cornell spoke at ASMCUE about 3D bacterial models. The ten-minute recorded session was entitled: “The Use of 3D Printed Cell Models to Improve Understanding of Bacterial Cell Size and Physiology.” Wollmuth spoke about how cell size of bacteria is limited by “reliance on passive diffusion for nutrient uptake” and have to “meet a minimum size threshold to accommodate essential cellular components.” Wollmuth shared some textbook diagrams with eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells that are about the same size in the illustration. This is misleading, Wollmuth stressed. They printed 3D models and evaluated the impact of student learning. Wollmuth mentioned that the impact on student learning is unclear. 3D printing is becoming more widely available. Wollmuth assessed several learning objectives with a lesson, and 110 students completed the pre/post surveys. Quizzes had questions with diagrams. Students interacted with the models. In part 1, students were asked to think about the relative size of cells and structures: why aren’t bacterial cells smaller? Students were given a nucleoid (150 m of fishing line!) and ribosomes. They were provided some measurements and asked to calculate some measurements. In the second part, students were given some models and asked to calculate surface to volume ratios. Students did better on the post-test as compared to the pre-test. Most students showed a positive change in score after the lesson. The way the data was depicted was really nice: a histogram binned by points and the x-axis was learning gains. Each learning objective was assessed by specific questions. Students also reported increased confidence for each learning objective post lesson. Wollmuth did a phenomenal job assessing this lesson an had over 110 participants!
