In the Fall of 2017, I took a course on developmental biology. One of the assignments for the class was to create a digital research project based on a human embryo developmental process, including a molecular signaling component. The project could revolve around any process in the body that I thought was interesting and use any digital software to share the results. The point of the project was to not only have to avoid writing a giant research paper, but to allow students to gain more knowledge about a developmental process that may not have been discussed in class. Part of the requirement for creating the project was to first find two different options I might want to research. As a pre-dental student, I choose to look at how teeth develop in a human embryo, something I will learn about it detail when I am in dental school. I then had to create a project proposal with several sources depicting what I was going to research in detail in one paragraph. This was similar to writing an abstract before fully completing the project. This was to allow the teacher to know what you had picked for a topic and help narrow the topic down even further.
To pick a more specific topic to discuss in my project, I searched for research articles on tooth development and looked for important signaling pathways that allow the process to happen through the library database. One of the most crucial signaling molecules produced during tooth development I found in several articles was bone morphogenic proteins, or BMPS, a part of the TGF-β superfamily. My overall goal by researching BMP in tooth development was to create an animated video showing its importance in each stage of tooth development at a basic understanding with lots of visual representations. Understanding this pathway could potentially help comprehend why some individuals have very malformed teeth versus individuals with straight and seemingly perfect teeth.
To begin my research, I looked at numerous research articles, dentistry websites, and lectures on tooth development made by other students or professors. I then critically analyzed each of the sources and fact checked each one against each other. I did this by writing numerous small summarizing paragraphs about the information I gained from each website in my notebook to understand the stages of tooth development. Not one website clearly defined the process, sometimes too much detail was given or sometimes too little. I spent many hours pouring over different articles trying to understand how the process worked as it was very difficult to understand without much background information on the subject. I often used Wikipedia to jumpstart what questions to search for as I wanted the project to be understood easily by my classmates and others with a similar college background as mine.
I used the website “Biteable” to create a video using their templates for animation and adding my own images and text I had synthesized from my research. I would often research one stage of development at a time, creating its part of the video and then would move onto the next stage, editing and changing out slides as needed. The video includes histological pictures, flow charts, and diagrams to be a visual representation of the information rather than regurgitated text. By doing this it helped clarify difficult concepts and examples. The hardest part of creating the video was not being able to change the speed at which the animation was played at. However, I found ways around this by frequently showing images twice in a row, one without information and one with. By creating the video, I was able to take a one of kind unique take on tooth development and create an informative research synthesis.
As part of being in the Honors program at MSU, I needed to present an original research project I had conducted. I learned about different routes to present through Dr. Dahlman such as going to the Honors Regional Conference, the Undergraduate Research Symposium (URS), or simply having a presentation of the project one day in the Honors lounge area. Although I had done Microbiology research with a faculty member, the results were not conclusive and little data was collected. Instead I decided to showcase my tooth development video by presenting my findings at the Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 10th, 2018.
Being able to present at the URS meant I needed to decide on a way to present my research (poster or presentation) and create an abstract. I had never written a true abstract about a topic I had researched on my own and was scared my research wouldn’t be good enough to be accepted to present. I used the outline of how to create an abstract provided on the URS website and while it was challenging at first, I just kept revising and condensing what I wanted to say until I had reached the 250-word limit. I also decided to present my research through a presentation rather than a poster as it would be hard to showcase what I had done without raw data and numbers I had calculated. I created my presentation using a powerpoint template provided by the Undergraduate Research Center (URC) and practiced it the day before with my roommate. I revolved my presentation around my methodology of research, how I created an annotated bibliography, my own journal and revisions of the project, and a showing of the final video at the end.
When the time came for me to present, I didn't realize there would be so many other people in the room and that other presenters were in the room with me, making it a very intimidating environment for me. I was third in line and worried my project wouldn't be "cool" enough compared to others. Hence, I was really nervous presenting my work and spoke too quickly and repeated myself, rather than elaborating on the project and process as a whole. If I were to redo the project and presentation, I would add a survey component to add data to my results section, describe how an annotated bibliography is created, and practice my presentation in a more timely manner. Although the outcome of the URS may not have been what I wanted, I still gained valuable knowledge on how to organize my research into a concise and fun way to share with others and inspire future researchers in the field through an oral presentation.