Using Inquiry-Based Learning to Enhance Immunology Laboratory Skills.

A challenge in teaching immunology in the undergraduate laboratory is to encompass the many varied skills that need to be applied when performing an investigative study of such a complex area. It requires background knowledge, data analysis skills, critical thinking, and design capacities to include relevant controls and applications of particular techniques to answer a research question. It also requires strong technical skills. One such approach is to use inquiry-based learning which allows students a more proactive and integrative role in their learning. In one of our final year immunology units we have incorporated an inquiry-based exercise that runs across four 5-hour sessions. Students are given two cornerstone immunology techniques (ELISA and a flow cytometry-based cytokine bead array), which they use to formulate a study investigating inflammation. Stage one is to design the experiment with some guidance from teaching staff, stage two is to perform the experiment, and then finally students are required to analyze the data, apply appropriate statistics, and write a report outlining their findings. This approach provides students ownership of the process and allows them the opportunity to investigate a real-world problem rather than just attempting to obtain the expected "correct answer." Feedback from both students and staff has been positive with strong engagement and high quality reports produced.

Notes from the field: rapidly growing nontuberculous Mycobacterium wound infections among medical tourists undergoing cosmetic surgeries in the Dominican Republic--multiple states, March 2013-February 2014.

In August 2013, the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (MDHMH) was notified of two persons with rapidly growing nontuberculous mycobacterial (RG-NTM) surgical-site infections. Both patients had undergone surgical procedures as medical tourists at the same private surgical clinic (clinic A) in the Dominican Republic the previous month. Within 7 days of returning to the United States, both sought care for symptoms that included surgical wound abscesses, clear fluid drainage, pain, and fever. Initial antibiotic therapy was ineffective. Material collected from both patients' wounds grew Mycobacterium abscessus exhibiting a high degree of antibiotic resistance characteristic of this organism.