Students Speak Out: The Impact of Participation in an Undergraduate Research Journal

Abstract

Universities are places where writing plays a central role in knowledge creation and dissemination (Graves, 2011). Students engage with writing in their courses, at their institution’s Writing Centre, and, perhaps more recently, in co-curricular projects such as an undergraduate research journal club. By participating in an undergraduate journal club, students develop critical thinking skills (Roberts, 2009), learn skills in research (Sandefur & Gordy, 2016), and produce knowledge (Neville, Power, Barnes, & Haynes, 2012). In this paper, we explore the impact of participation in a particular undergraduate research journal, the Undergraduate Journal of the Arts1 (UJA), on students’ interactions with academic writing. To do so, we first surveyed the landscape of undergraduate research journals in Canada. We then conducted an online survey and interviewed the UJA’s authors, editors, reviewers, and management board members. Our findings show that regardless of the roles they held at the UJA, participants benefitted from participation in terms of the development of their writing, interpersonal, and communication skills. We also discovered that participants faced time management constraints but were able to turn these obstacles into an opportunity to gain time management skills. Overall, our research has contributed to a sparse area of literature on undergraduate research journals. It also shows the value of an undergraduate research journal for student development.