Abstract
Students who engage in undergraduate research experiences acquire many benefits, including an understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed, recognition that knowledge can be complex and uncertain, and the habit of viewing knowledge critically. This paper describes a first-year two-course sequence that provides multidisciplinary opportunities for international science students to engage in the research process and present at a student-led research conference. We describe course goals and structure, and discuss whether the goals were attained using instructor reflections, student performance, and student survey data. We also evaluate the impact of changes to the curriculum between Year 1 and Year 2. In both years, we found that students engaged meaningfully with the research process and began to understand how scientific knowledge is created. We also found that a modular model with front-end support worked better for instructors as compared to a continuous individualized project mentorship model. This modular approach involved structured pre- and post-class assignments within discipline-specific themes containing examples of the research process embedded into the discipline. These discipline-specific modules were followed by modules covering broader research process themes. We encourage instructors who are thinking of delivering a similar research-based course for first-year students to provide support via example research questions and other example templates for student submissions.
Highlights
Students who engage in undergraduate research experiences acquire many benefits, including an understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed, recognition that knowledge can be complex and uncertain, and the habit of viewing knowledge critically
This paper describes a first-year twocourse sequence that provides multidisciplinary opportunities for international science students to engage in the research process and present at a student-led research conference
We found that students engaged meaningfully with the research process and began to understand how scientific knowledge is created
Summary
Students who engage in undergraduate research experiences acquire many benefits, including an understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed, recognition that knowledge can be complex and uncertain, and the habit of viewing knowledge critically. T is important for undergraduate science students to develop an understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed, to begin viewing science as complex and vulnerable to criticism, and to start seeing themselves as potential contributors (Fox et al., 2014; Magolda, 2006; Wieman, 2012) This set of goals is epistemic in nature (i.e. related to views of knowledge) (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997). First-year university students tend to view knowledge as certain, finite and explicit, and look towards external authorities, such as instructors, as holders of knowledge (Abd-El-Khalick, 2006; Hofer, 2004; Schommer, 1993; Tsai, 1999) These views are inconsistent with the epistemic goals of undergraduate science education. What impact did the curriculum changes have? Before addressing these two questions, we outline the goals for the course and describe the course context and curriculum for Year 1 and 2
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