Generating Publishable Data from Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences in Chemistry.

Abstract

Embedding Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) into chemistry curricula has become a best practice due to the overwhelming evidence that these experiences deepen students' content comprehension, improve students' problem-solving skills, and increase retention within the major. For these reasons, faculty are often encouraged to develop CUREs for their courses, which typically take a substantial amount of effort and administrative/financial support. To justify these efforts, one of the most cited benefits of CURE development for faculty specifically is that they can pilot research projects and publish data produced during CUREs in scientific publications. However, there is less evidence in the literature that these benefits commonly occur. Based on direct upper-level, interdisciplinary CURE development experience and a national survey of faculty across institution types, it is clear that translating CURE data into publishable science is quite challenging due to several common barriers. Barriers identified include the need for follow up data that must be generated by either the faculty or a research student, the lack of reproducibility of data generated by novice students, and the lack of faculty time to write the manuscripts. Additionally, institution type (private vs public non-PhD granting; non-PhD granting vs PhD granting), faculty rank, and CURE level (lower vs upper-level courses), among other factors, impacted the likelihood of publication of CURE data. Based on these results and experiences, best practices for maximizing positive outcomes for both students and faculty with regard to CURE design and implementation have been developed.