Increasing student exposure to primary literature in early biology coursework can enhance scientific literacy and quantitative reasoning skills. The efficacy of primary literature discussion is heavily impacted by article selection, as student engagement is optimal with material that is topical and has clear relevance to real world issues. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the prevalence of COVID-19-related scientific research in the mainstream media makes it an ideal topic for current discussion in entry-level biology courses. Here, we present an activity developed to facilitate a remote, synchronous discussion of an open access clinical trial publication on the experimental drug remdesivir in the treatment of COVID-19 (Beigel et al., 2020, N Engl J Med https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa2007764). The activity, which is amenable to adaptation for other research articles, emphasizes concepts in experimental design, statistical analysis, graphical interpretation, and the structure, content, and organization of typical sections of a primary research article. Importantly, the activity highlights the utility of the classroom response tool Pear Deck, a Google Slides add-on, for creating engaging literature discussions that can be readily adapted to a wide variety of teaching modalities.

中文翻译：

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分析COVID-19临床试验以在生物学入门课程中强调实验设计和定量推理。

在早期生物学课程中增加学生对基础文献的接触可以提高科学素养和定量推理能力。主要的文献讨论的效果在很大程度上受到文章选择的影响，因为学生的参与是最适合主题性的材料，并且与现实世界的问题具有明显的相关性。在COVID-19大流行期间，与COVID-19相关的科学研究在主流媒体中盛行，这使其成为当前入门级生物学课程中讨论的理想话题。在这里，我们提出了一项活动，旨在促进远程，同步讨论关于治疗COVID-19的实验药物雷姆昔韦的开放获取临床试验出版物的研究（Beigel等人，2020年，N Engl J Med https：// doi （.org / 10.1056 / nejmoa2007764）。活动，它适合于其他研究论文，着重于实验设计，统计分析，图形解释以及主要研究论文典型部分的结构，内容和组织方面的概念。重要的是，该活动强调了课堂响应工具Pear Deck（Google幻灯片的附加组件）的实用性，用于创建引人入胜的文献讨论，可以很容易地适应多种教学方式。