Many institutions use a first-year experience to help incoming, first-time college students transition into higher education. These programs are reported to positively impact student retention, overall academic performance, and engagement with the campus community. At Catawba College, students enroll in a First Year Seminar (FYS) course during the Fall semester of their first year. FYS instructors design their course based on a topic of their choosing, creating a varied collection of FYS sections each year. I recently offered a section of FYS entitled “Microbial Me”, which focused on meeting the microbes that call our bodies “home”. In each FYS, instructors must assess a series of six skill-based learning outcomes, including the ability to summarize and interpret course content in writing as well as the ability to engage in critical dialogue about course content. As one way of addressing these outcomes, I deployed a final, interactive portfolio project, “Building Micropia”, in which students were asked to use digital artifacts collected throughout the semester to construct a virtual museum designed for a general audience, similar to the Micropia museum located in Amsterdam. In each virtual exhibit, students showcased photos from laboratory activities or other assignments while summarizing major course ideas. Additionally, students created a “curator’s office”, in which they wrote about how their perceptions of microbes were changed by taking this class. During our final class meeting, students paired up to “visit” each other’s museums and discuss what they learned from their visit. This project effectively served as a culminating course experience, fulfilled several learning objectives, and allowed students to practice communicating scientific ideas for a general audience. Due to the potential for customization, this assignment is highly adaptable for different course topics, formats, and levels.
