Search bioRxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2020.10.26.353987

Digital Imaging and Vision Analysis in Science Project improves the self-efficacy and skill of undergraduate students in computational work

Durham Brooks, T.·Burks, R.·Doyle, E.·Meysenburg, M.·Frey, T.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

In many areas of science, the ability to use computers to process, analyze, and visualize large data sets has become essential. The mismatch between the ability to generate large data sets and the computing skill to analyze them is arguably the most striking within the life sciences. The Digital Image and Vision Applications in Science (DIVAS) project describes a scaffolded series of interventions implemented over the span of a year to build the coding and computing skill of undergraduate students majoring primarily in the natural sciences. The program is designed as a community of practice, providing support within a network of learners. The program focus, images as data, provides a compelling hook for participating scholars. Scholars begin the program with a one-credit spring semester seminar where they are exposed to image analysis. The program continues in the summer with a one-week, intensive Python and image processing workshop. From there, scholars tackle image analysis problems using a pair programming approach and finish the summer with independent research. Finally, scholars participate in a follow-up seminar the following spring and help onramp the next cohort of incoming scholars. We observed promising growth in participant self-efficacy in computing that was maintained throughout the project as well as significant growth in key computational skills. DIVAS program funding was able to support seventeen DIVAS over three years, with 76% of DIVAS scholars identifying as women and 14% of scholars being members of an underrepresented minority group. Most scholars (82%) entered the program as freshmen, with 89% of DIVAS scholars retained for the duration of the program and 100% of scholars remaining a STEM major one year after completing the program. The outcomes of the DIVAS project support the efficacy of building computational skill through repeated exposure of scholars to relevant applications over an extended period within a community of practice.

Source connections

Explore related subjects

scientific communication and educationPreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Durham Brooks, T., Burks, R., Doyle, E., Meysenburg, M., Frey, T.. 2020-10-26. Digital Imaging and Vision Analysis in Science Project improves the self-efficacy and skill of undergraduate students in computational work. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.26.353987

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

Auditing Biomedical Literature with Blinded AI Peer Review: Where Peer Review Works, Where It Fails, and How to Strengthen It

Biomedical publishing has grown more than elevenfold since 1991, outstripping human peer review. Unblinded language models cannot audit this literature objectively because they recognize famous authors and journals from training memory. We built BARS (Blinded AI Review System), an automated referee that strips titles, author names, institutions, journal headers, and dates before grading full-text manuscripts on a 10-point scale covering methods, evidence, biology, and reproducibility. We used BARS to generate 1,874 blind reviews across 1,714 unique papers. BARS passed 100% of verified sound controls, caught 77% to 91% of internally flawed papers, eliminated a +0.35-point prestige boost, and more than doubled human referee consistency. Across 320 recent open-access articles (2020-2025) from eight fields, 54% failed on core scientific rigor (<5.0/10; 41% excluding megajournals). Revision at selective journals improved preprints more than twice as much as revision at commercial megajournals (+0.62 vs. +0.30 points; baseline-adjusted p = 0.033), and BARS recalled 98% of unresolved human referee critiques across 100 open-review papers. Across 915 date-blinded papers from 1991 to 2025, average scores fell from 7.6/10 to 5.8/10 as megajournals and template database studies expanded. Blinded self-audits of 238 papers by two senior authors -- and of this manuscript itself -- caught real statistical, control, and table errors in our own work. At four cents per paper, BARS offers a practical quality check for authors, journals, and readers (https://veg.github.io/BARS/).

scientific communication and education↗
bioRxiv2026

From Problems to Solutions: How Self-Questions Drive Strong Scientific Reasoning

Metacognition, or awareness and control of thinking, is essential for problem solving because it helps solvers select strategies for learning and decide when to enact them (planning), check their understanding in the moment (monitoring), and assess effectiveness of solutions and learning strategies (evaluating). Most studies that examine metacognition do so retrospectively, leaving a critical gap in how metacognition is used in-the-moment for problem solving. In this study, we utilized a think-aloud interview approach to capture and characterize the metacognitive skills that senior undergraduate life science students at three institution types in the United States used spontaneously while solving challenging biology problems. We found that the students (n = 39) displayed a wide variety and quantity of monitoring, some evaluating, and nearly no planning skills while creating a solution backed with high-quality reasoning. Students frequently used self-questions to monitor and evaluate their thinking. We found that self-questioning is a critical skill for generating solutions, but it only moves problem solving forward if the student asks and correctly answers the self-question out loud. This study illustrates how self-questioning and other metacognitive regulation skills provide links to bridge the gap between a student's prior knowledge and specific features of a challenging problem. Based on our student data, we conceptualized a model of metacognitive phases during problem solving with high-quality reasoning. Finally, we present a self-question scaffold to facilitate the proposed phases (planning, monitoring, reasoning, and evaluating) so educators can equip students with metacognitive and scientific reasoning tools for effective problem solving.

scientific communication and education↗
bioRxiv2026

Preprint solicitation as a natural experiment in scholarly publishing

Preprinting is a growing and increasingly recognized mechanism for scientific communication and productivity and a way to facilitate global access to science. The interplay of preprinting practices with formal peer-reviewed publication is an open question that is now tractable to targeted analysis. Here, we take advantage of nearly a decade of preprint solicitation at Proceedings B to address this question, which offers a quasi-experimental setting for comparing outcomes for solicited preprints and traditionally submitted manuscripts. We used submission records from 15,368 manuscripts from 2018-2024 to assess whether preprint solicitation affects acceptance rates, journal scope, author geographic diversity, and post-publication uptake. Solicited manuscripts were accepted at nearly twice the rate of traditional submissions and received more downloads and citations after publication. Submission topics were broadly similar between the two routes, though solicited manuscripts showed marginally greater subject diversity. Geographic disparities favoring the Global North persisted, but acceptance rates for solicited manuscripts converged across regions, narrowing the gap seen in traditional submissions. These findings extend earlier work on this initiative and indicate that editor-driven solicitation can identify high-quality preprints, broaden geographic representation, and increase research visibility, offering a replicable model for journals seeking to diversify authorship while maintaining editorial standards.

scientific communication and education↗