Entering Research: A Course That Creates Community and Structure for Beginning Undergraduate Researchers in the STEM Disciplines
Entering Research: A Course That Creates Community and Structure for Beginning Undergraduate Researchers in the STEM Disciplines
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DOI：
10.1187/cbe.09-10-0073
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发表时间：
2010-06-01
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Branchaw, Janet
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Balster, Nicholas;Pfund, Christine;Branchaw, Janet
本科研究经验已被证明可以提高大学生的教育经验和保留率，特别是那些来自代表性不足的人口。然而，许多挑战仍然存在相对于学生导航大型机构之间建立社区。我们开发了一个名为“进入研究”的新颖课程，创建了一个学习社区来支持开始的本科研究人员，并旨在为研究生，博士后和教师担任本科研究人员的导师提供平行的进入指导课程。该课程作为一个模型，可以很容易地适应跨科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）学科使用现成的主持人手册。课程评估和严格的评估表明，进入研究课程可以在许多方面帮助学生，包括寻找导师，了解他们在研究社区中的位置，并将他们的研究与他们在生物和物理科学中的课程工作联系起来。与对照组的学生相比，这门课的学生报告说，他们的技能、知识和信心在统计学上有了显著的提高，对照组的学生也从事本科研究，但没有参加这门课。此外，教师和工作人员谁担任进入研究课程的主持人描述了他们的经验是有益的，他们会推荐给他们的同事。
Undergraduate research experiences have been shown to enhance the educational experience and retention of college students, especially those from underrepresented populations. However, many challenges still exist relative to building community among students navigating large institutions. We developed a novel course called Entering Research that creates a learning community to support beginning undergraduate researchers and is designed to parallel the Entering Mentoring course for graduate students, postdocs, and faculty serving as mentors of undergraduate researchers. The course serves as a model that can be easily adapted for use across the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines using a readily available facilitator's manual. Course evaluations and rigorous assessment show that the Entering Research course helps students in many ways, including finding a mentor, understanding their place in a research community, and connecting their research to their course work in the biological and physical sciences. Students in the course reported statistically significant gains in their skills, knowledge, and confidence as researchers compared with a control group of students, who also were engaged in undergraduate research but not enrolled in this course. In addition, the faculty and staff members who served as facilitators of the Entering Research course described their experience as rewarding and one they would recommend to their colleagues.