Course-Based Undergraduate Research for All: Preparing the Future STEM Workforce

进行真实研究的机会提高了学生对科学的理解，并促进了他们作为科学家的自我认同。基于课程的本科生研究体验(CURE)允许更多的学生接触到真实的研究，而不是传统的师徒学徒式的本科生研究方法。调查人员将制定治疗方案，亚利桑那州立大学(ASU)西校区数学与自然科学学院的所有STEM专业的学生都将报名参加。这些课程将集中在研究问题上，在这些问题中，学生将成为科学家--生成假设、制定方案、进行实验、生成数据并分析结果。通过设计跨学科的治疗模块，在亚利桑那州立大学韦斯特分校进行测试，并广泛传播，该项目将加强基于证据的教学方法，这将改善未来STEM劳动力的教育。将开发的治疗将集中在食品科学、补救、细胞生物学和种群动力学方面的主题。暂定单元题目包括“亚利桑那州本地蜜蜂：蜜蜂物种多样性和相对丰度”，“矿场土壤的植物毒性和植物修复”，以及“酿酒酵母中乙醇生产和絮凝的分析”。所有模块都将面向数据生成、分析和发布，并将促进对其研究主题的理解。研究人员将开发整合科学方法的所有方面--即假设生成、实验执行和数据分析--的教学方法，并将分析治疗方法提高学生对科学的兴趣、能力和保持能力的能力。该方法将纳入一个“共同课程大纲”，这将使科学探究的共同组成部分的教学标准化，并将足够灵活地应用于不同的研究主题。为了鼓励其他机构的教员使用治疗方法，研究人员将主办关于治疗方法的一般性质、其特定的治疗模式和模块以及评估技术的研讨会。

Opportunities to conduct authentic research improve students' understanding of science and promote their self-identification as scientists. Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) allow many more students to be exposed to authentic research than the traditional mentor-mentee, apprenticeship-style approach to undergraduate research. The investigators will develop CUREs in which all STEM majors in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at the West campus of Arizona State University (ASU) will enroll. The courses will focus on research questions, and in them the students will become scientists -- generating hypotheses, developing protocols, performing experiments, generating data, and analyzing the results. By designing interdisciplinary CURE modules, testing them at ASU West, and disseminating them widely, the project will enhance an evidence-based pedagogical approach that will improve the education of the future STEM workforce.The CUREs to be developed will focus on topics in food science, remediation, cell biology, and population dynamics. Tentative module titles include "Native Bees of Arizona: Bee Species Diversity and Relative Abundance," "Phytotoxicity and Phytoremediation of Mine Site Soils," and "Analysis of Ethanol Production and Flocculation in Brewer's Yeast." All of the modules will be geared toward data generation, analysis, and publication and will advance the understanding of their research topics. The investigators will develop pedagogical methodology that integrates all aspects of the scientific method -- namely, hypothesis generation, experimental execution, and data analysis -- and will analyze the ability of the CUREs to increase students' interest, abilities, and retention in science. The methodology will incorporate a "common course outline," which will standardize the teaching of common components of scientific inquiry and will be flexible enough to be applied to diverse research topics. To encourage the use of CUREs by faculty at other institutions, the investigators will sponsor workshops on the nature of CUREs in general, their particular CURE model and modules, and assessment techniques.