Student Ownership of Lab Projects: The role of interpersonal interactions

Abstract

Ownership is a significant learning goal in many project-based lab courses. An empirical model of ownership will support educators in the practice, design, and implementation of courses that encourage student ownership. In this talk, I will present results of a collaborative, fine-grained analysis on 15 student interviews from 5 Western and Mid-Western institutions. In prior work, our research team described ownership as a relationship among students and their projects that spans three project phases: choosing a topic, executing research methods, and creating deliverables. In each phase, combinations of material, cognitive, social, and affective student interactions compose student-project ownership. This talk will feature emergent social interaction sub-themes, such as student ‘interpersonal conflicts’ and ‘troubleshooting’; and instructor ‘coaching’ and ‘articulation’. Elaboration on these themes could point toward pedagogical guidelines that support student feelings of ownership, while also avoiding negative outcomes created by unbalanced project-roles and other conflicts.