Expanding Undergraduate Research Participation in General Education Courses to Improve STEM Persistence and Graduation Rates

在改善本科STEM教育的支持下：西班牙裔服务机构（HSI）计划，这个轨道1项目旨在建立本科研究的能力和扩大早期参与。 它将通过实施和测试一系列基于课程的本科生研究经验来实现这一目标，这些经验旨在使更多的本科生能够参与STEM研究。本科研究与提高学生的坚持性，提高毕业率，增加STEM内容掌握和增强科学身份有关。本科生研究经历的这些积极影响对于那些在STEM中通常代表性不足的学生来说更为明显。 在许多机构，本科研究经验的需求超过了可用的机会。 因此，这些经验可能会偏向于那些进入大学的学生，他们拥有做研究所需的知识和技能。 参与可以是有限的学生谁还没有“准备好研究”，包括学生从资源不足的高中。 该项目将涉及多个STEM学科，并参与机构范围内的变革：近100名教师将把研究经验嵌入到通识教育课程的85个以上部分中，这些课程将在项目过程中为5,000多名学生提供服务。 从实施和研究这一研究注入的信息将增加了解如何：a）提高教学和学习成果在STEM通识教育课程; B）改善学生的研究参与途径; c）利用本科研究，以更有战略性地提高持久性和学术成就的学生在STEM专业代表不足;以及d）提供一种成本较低但仍然有效的方法，向更多学生介绍科学研究的价值和关键概念。 预计增加本科研究的机会将加强入门课程的教学，增加学生研究人员的多样性，并提高STEM领域的大学毕业率。 该项目将通过比较完整的本科生研究经验的成果，以解决本科生教育知识状态的不足，增加嵌入在通识教育和门户STEM课程的本科生研究经验。项目团队将使用人口统计和学生教育记录来衡量不同学生群体的多层次研究参与的影响。 此外，研究团队将开发和完善一个新的指标，以衡量学生从低年级到高年级课程的过渡。 将被解决的关键研究问题包括：如何做本科研究参与的影响学习，自我认知和行为的额外水平，相比，充分的研究参与？ 在多大程度上可以利用这些介绍性水平来扩大本科研究经验的数量，并创造更具包容性的途径，以充分的研究？哪些学生群体最有可能受益于不同层次的研究参与，并从每一个教学机制和活动？ 西班牙裔服务机构如何更准确地衡量低年级到高年级的过渡，以确定最需要干预的学生？ HSI计划旨在加强本科STEM教育，并建立HSI的能力。 HSI计划支持的项目也将产生关于如何实现这些目标的新知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) Program, this Track 1 project aims to build capacity for and broaden early participation in undergraduate research. It will do so by implementing and testing a sequence of course-based undergraduate research experiences designed to enable more undergraduates to participate in STEM research. Undergraduate research has been linked to increased student persistence, improved graduation rates, increased STEM content mastery, and enhanced science identity. These positive effects of undergraduate research experiences are even more pronounced for students from populations typically underrepresented in STEM. In many institutions, demand for undergraduate research experiences exceeds available opportunities. As a result, the experiences may be biased toward students who enter college with the knowledge and skills needed to do research. Participation can be limited for students who are not yet “research-ready,” including students from under-resourced high schools. This project will involve multiple STEM disciplines and engage in institution-wide changes: nearly 100 instructors will embed research experiences into more than 85 sections of general education courses that will serve more than 5,000 students over the course of the project. Information from implementing and studying this research infusion will increase understanding about how to: a) improve instruction and learning outcomes in STEM general education courses; b) improve student pathways to research engagement; c) leverage undergraduate research to more strategically improve persistence and academic attainment for students underrepresented in STEM professions; and d) provide a lower-cost, yet still effective, method for introducing more students to the value and key concepts of scientific research. It is expected that increasing access to undergraduate research will strengthen instruction in introductory courses, increase the diversity of student researchers, and result in improved college graduation rates in STEM fields. This project will address deficiencies in the state of knowledge about undergraduate student education by comparing outcomes of complete undergraduate research experiences to incremental undergraduate research experiences embedded in general education and portal STEM courses. The project team will use demographic and student educational records to measure the impact of multiple levels of research engagement on different student populations. In addition, the research team will develop and refine a new metric to measure student transitions from lower to upper division courses. Key research questions that will be addressed include: How do additional levels of undergraduate research engagement impact learning, self-perceptions, and behavior, in comparison to full research engagement? To what extent can these introductory levels be leveraged to expand the number of undergraduate research experiences, and to create more inclusive pathways to full research? Which student populations are most likely to benefit from the different levels of research engagement, and from each of the instructional mechanisms and activities? How can Hispanic-Serving Institutions more accurately measure lower division to upper division transition in order to identify students in most need of intervention? The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education and build capacity at HSIs. Projects supported by the HSI Program will also generate new knowledge on how to achieve these aims.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.