Webinar Summary for

Integrating Undergraduate Research into Courses

Dr. Catherine Mader, Professor of Physics at Hope College

Dr. Ian MacInnes, Professor of English at Albion College

Dr. Lisa Lewis, Professor of Chemistry at Albion College

Recorded live on Wednesday, March 25th at 4PM

To listen to the recording:link here

Brief Description: Faculty have been embedding research experiences into courses for many, many years. In some cases, these research-rich courses contribute data to new or ongoingscholarly work of faculty that may be publishable and in other cases, the research results may be of value to a community organization. The literature is full of examples of these courses and reports of the learning gains that students experience when they are inthese courses. Drs. Mader, MacInnesand Lewis will share from the literature as well as their ownexperiences about the value of embedding research into courses, what students say that they gain from these experiences and how faculty can get started developing and teaching research-rich courses. The webinar will begin with some introductory material about what is meant by research-rich courses and how they might fit into the larger curricular goals of a department or even a degree. Then, they will present on a few specific courses in the sciences, social sciences and humanities. After they wrap up their portion with some thoughts about assessing these experiences and suggestions about professional development opportunities for faculty, we'll have time for questions from the listeners.

Webinar outline:

  • Why, What and How?
  • Individual Course Examples:

science, social sciences,humanities

  • Research experiences across the curriculum
  • Professional development opportunities
  • Resources
  • Q and A

The webinar begins with a few minutes of introductory information about why faculty might want to integrate research into courses, some of the terminology that is used frequently to describe these course-based research experiences and how the presenters in this webinar will use 5 consistent features of research throughout the presentation. These five key features of course-based research experiences are (1) use of disciplinary practice, (2) discovery, (3) broadly relevant or significant work, (4) collaboration and (5) iteration.1

The presenters offer brief descriptions of 5 courses in which students doing research is a significantpart of course structure, process and evaluation. The first example is the SEA-PHAGES courses in biology where students are discovering and characterizing a new phage genome. These courses are being offered at many schools around the country through the support of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.The second course example is an upper-level research methods course in sociology at Hope College where students carried out research about public opinion on wolves in Michigan, in advance of three ballot initiatives in November 2014. The third course example is a first-year seminar course in the humanities at Albion College where students are challenged to research, design, build and test a replica of an ancient Greek chariot. The fourth example is a series of courses that are connected as a Creating Sustainable Communities labs at Albion College, where groups of students collaborate on projects associated with sustainability.And finally, an example from Calvin College is presented where first-year students, being mentored by upper level students, carry out research on the sand dunes in West Michigan.2

The webinar continues with some information about how faculty and staff in a whole department (or other group) can work together to structure research experiences within multiple courses to provide a richer developmental process for students to gain the skills, habits and maturity of researchers. The geology program at Albion College is presented as a well-developed model of such connectivity and structure within their curriculum.

The webinar concludes with some suggestions for professional development opportunities for those faculty wanting help in planning courses with research experiences and finally some resources. The information from those two slides, including the links,are copied below.

References:

  1. CBE-Life Sciences Education, Vol. 13, 29-40, Spring 2014
  2. Professor Dr. Deanna van Dijk, Department of Chemistry, Calvin College:

Professional Development Opportunities:

  • National Academies Special Topics Summer Institute: Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences
  • CUR Institute: Integrating Undergraduate Research into the Curriculum Institute
  • REIL-BIOLOGY - workshops at professional meetings:
  • Association of Biology Laboratory Education (ABLE), June 23-26, Boston
  • Ecological Society of America (ESA), August 9-14, Baltimore
  • American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB), Dec 12-16,San Diego

Resources:

  • CBE Life Sciences Education (many issues and articles, not just biology/life science)
  • CUR-curated Zotero bibliography of articles on integrating undergraduate research into the curriculum
  • CUREnet: NSF-RCN focused on developing and assessing Course-based research experiences
  • Developing and Maintaining a Successful Undergraduate Research Program, Editor(s): Timothy W. Chapp1, Mark A. Benvenuto2, Volume 1156. Publication Date (Web): December 17, 2013 Copyright © 2013 American Chemical Society
  • ACS Spring meeting: CHED: Undergraduate Research in Chemistry: Expanding Opportunities and Broadening Participation
  • Physics Education Research Conference, summer 2015
  • SERC: Science Education Resource Center van Dijk, D. (2014) “Building Content Knowledge in a Student Research Team.”On the Cutting Edge:Undergraduate Research as Teaching Practice – Teaching Activities.