Integrating and Scaffolding Research into Undergraduate STEM Curricula: Probing Faculty, Student, Disciplinary, and Institutional Pathways to Transformational Change

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Participation in undergraduate research provides well-documented benefits to students, including high academic achievement, educational persistence, and significant gains in knowledge and skills. Yet equity gaps in participating in research persist. To address this shortcoming, this project will assist faculty in departments of biology, chemistry, physics, and psychology in designing and implementing coordinated four-year curricula to provide all students with equitable access to the benefits of undergraduate research. Two departments at each of twelve institutions will be competitively selected for their interest in comprehensive research-infused curricular reform. Each department involved in the project will be assisted by expert consultants who will maintain sustained communication to oversee and guide the curricular transformation process. Research will be conducted to characterize the factors that enable students to participate and persist in an inquiry-driven curriculum and to identify the strategies that support faculty, departments, and institutions in catalyzing and sustaining the changes needed to support this participation. Findings from this study will contribute to efforts to close undergraduate research participation gaps and guide transformation efforts in undergraduate education. To achieve a cohesive curriculum that initiates students into a culture of inquiry and research in the discipline, departments will use a backward design approach to develop scaffolded, research-rich courses and assignments that build in deliberate ways to guide students to greater independence and ownership of their learning. Two overarching research questions will be examined: (1) What effect do student characteristics (e.g., pre-existing academic preparation, current course performance) have on student-learning experiences and outcomes in a scaffolded inquiry-driven curriculum? (2) How do different departmental approaches and distinct disciplinary cultures impact the integration of the components and outcomes of undergraduate research into the curriculum? A mixed-methods approach will be used to address these questions, including surveys, focus groups with students and faculty, observations and interviews with faculty and team consultants, annual progress reports, and in-depth site visits. A novel aspect of this project will be the development of both standardized and experimental questions on the National Survey of Student Engagement and the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement. These surveys will allow for comparison of project institutions with national results. The theory of change model that develops from this project will allow a broad and diverse range of institutional types and departments/disciplines to assess their readiness for research-scaffolded curricula and provide key insights into the effects of such curricular transformation on student achievement and organizational and cultural change.