Student-faculty Collaboration Research Articles

Partners in Research: Developing a Model for Undergraduate Faculty-Student Collaboration.

Maintaining scholarship while delivering an undergraduate nursing program is a challenge for nursing faculty. In this paper, we describe an approach that involves undergraduate nursing students in a program of faculty research, which evaluates new approaches to teaching and learning. Students work with faculty to develop a research proposal, identifying specific questions and exploring relevant literature. Projects may include original data collection with faculty supervision, or secondary analysis of existing datasets. Foci have included partnership learning between nursing students and older adults, models of sustainability for a traveling health clinic, and experiences of aging. Findings and recommendations feed into the broader faculty research agenda, provide a foundation for subsequent projects, and inform further development of educational programs. Students have presented at local and national conferences and developed papers for publication based on this joint work. We describe the benefits and challenges of these partnerships, drawing upon student and faculty reflections.

Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future: student research, social media, and suburban sustainability

The Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future (SSF) online social media project is a student-faculty collaboration at Roosevelt University that addresses sustainability issues, challenges, and solutions in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and, more generally, suburban communities. Conceived as an experimental class assignment in 2011, the SSF website and blog has become a locally relevant publication venue that engages sustainability topics in an interdisciplinary fashion and provides constructively critical information for the public about local suburban communities’ efforts to become more sustainable in government operations, use of water and energy, and transportation systems. Students and faculty benefit from the opportunity to produce meaningful and potentially useful research and commentary through specially focused class writing projects (both individual and collaborative), the university community has become more aware of its role in the “edge city” suburban community of Schaumburg, a major employment and shopping center in suburban Chicago, and local organizations have connected with the university in mutually beneficial ways through the website. In a time when urban sustainability is a primary focus of city planning, parkland development, urban farming, and green infrastructure projects—all worthy endeavors most assuredly—the SSF Project (1) highlights the need for and impact of suburban-focused sustainability initiatives in public/active transportation, stormwater reduction and water conservation, and restoration of native ecosystems and (2) demonstrates the role colleges and universities can play in this process.

Student Embargoes within Institutional Repositories: Faculty Early Transparency Concerns

Libraries encourage students to utilize Institutional Repositories (IRs) to house e-portfolios that demonstrate their skills and experiences. This is especially important for students when applying for jobs and admission into graduate schools. However, within the academic sphere there are legitimate reasons why some faculty-student collaboration efforts should not be documented and openly shared in institutional repositories. The need for the protection of ideas and processes prior to faculty publication can be in direct conflict with the intention for institutional repositories to promote the excellent efforts of students. This is certainly true in laboratory situations where details of experiments and research areas are guarded for the lifetime of the exploration process. Librarians must work with others to develop guidelines and educational programs that prepare all stakeholders for these new information release considerations. One outcome of such deliberations could be the development of mutually beneficial publication guidelines which protect sensitive details of research yet allow students to submit selective research documentation into an IR. The other extreme, with no agreed upon partial embargo scenarios, could result in the removal of students from sensitive collaborations. Given the need for scientific laboratories to utilize student workers, and the benefit of real research experiences for students, the academy must find a balanced solution to this inherent conflict situation.

Global health education programming as a model for inter-institutional collaboration in interprofessional health education

While global health (GH) opportunities have expanded at schools of medicine, nursing, and public health, few examples of interprofessional approaches to GH education have been described. The elective GH program at our university serves as an important opportunity for high-quality interprofessional education. We undertook a qualitative study to examine the experience of student, faculty and administrative leaders of the program. We used content analysis to code responses and analyze data. Among the leadership, key themes fell within the categories of interprofessional education, student–faculty collaboration, professional development, and practical considerations for the development of such programs. The principles described could be considered by institutions seeking to develop meaningful partnerships in an effort to develop or refine interprofessional global health education programs.

A Research Elective Course on Dietary Supplements to Engage Doctor of Pharmacy Students in Primary Literature Evaluation and Scholarly Activity

Purpose: To develop and implement a research elective course to enhance skills of pharmacy students on primary literature evaluation and evidence-based practice on dietary supplements and generate scholarly publications. Methods: A 2 credit hour independent research elective course was designed and implemented in the third-year doctor of pharmacy curriculum. The course involved student-led research activities that included formulating research project, reviewing of primary literature, collection and evaluation of data, and writing of review articles for publication in peer-reviewed journals. An online survey was administered to evaluate students’ perceptions of the course. Results: Students successfully completed the course. The course resulted in peer-reviewed publications through student–faculty collaboration. Pharmacy students enrolled in the elective course perceived that the course helped them enhance their analytical reasoning, critical thinking and drug-literature evaluation skills, gain evidence-based knowledge, and apply the knowledge into practice during their advanced pharmacy practice experiences community pharmacy rotations. Conclusions: The course provided opportunity to the pharmacy students to not only critically search and evaluate the literature but also publish in peer-reviewed journals. Other pharmacy schools/colleges can adopt this course model to create opportunities for student–faculty collaborations toward scholarly accomplishments.

Faculty and Student Affairs Collaboration in the Corporate University

Faculty, student affairs professionals, and most importantly, students, are paying the price as institutions of higher education increasingly operate in a top-down manner with an over-emphasis on the bottom line. The corporatization of higher education creates lopsided reward (and punishment) systems for faculty, unreasonably stressful environments for student affairs professionals already straining to do more with less as substantive resources for students continue to decline, and student debt increases. This article argues for an invigoration of the faculty-student affairs collaboration discourse through the lens of critical management studies, a framework for examining power relationships in organizations.

Being an Elbow: A Phenomenological Autoethnography of Faculty-Student Collaboration for Accommodations

Hybrid and online courses and advances in assistive technologies make accommodating students with disabilities ever-changing, requiring innovation. This reality, coupled with students’ reluctance to disclose disabilities, points toward a need for replacing accommodations directed at those with disabilities with universal design whereby they become accessible to all—virtually eliminating the need for accommodations. In this paper, a master's of social work student (Chad) and his instructor (Regina) document their collaborations to revise a social work research course to meet his request for accommodations to make options more universally accessible. These revisions are done through reflections from both Chad and Regina from a phenomenological autoethnographic perspective—depicting their lived experiences.

Promoting Student Learning and Scholarship through Undergraduate Research Journals

AbstractPrevious research indicates that undergraduate research activities promote student-faculty collaborations and have a positive impact on students, faculty, and institutions. A review of 13 active undergraduate political science journals indicates that these publications take a variety of approaches in format, frequency, and submission requirements. Further, a survey of undergraduate political science journal editors shows that the role of students and faculty and the sources of support for journal publication vary considerably. Finally, case studies of the undergraduate journal experience at three different institutions suggest that political science journals promote student engagement and student-faculty collaboration.

Student-faculty Co-inquiry Into Student Reading: Recognising SoTL as Pedagogic Practice

This paper reports the evaluation of a student-faculty collaborative study investigating international students’ perceptions of the role of reading in higher education. The study examined the academic reading and source-use practices of ten undergraduate students in a range of disciplines in one UK university. In previous research on student literacy practices, students are often positioned as research “objects” rather than as active participants with an investment in enhancing the student experience through engagement in pedagogic research. In this paper we present a case study of student faculty collaboration in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Drawing on the analysis of student and lecturer accounts of the collaborative research experience, we identify the benefits and challenges of student-faculty partnership approaches. We conclude by arguing that conceptualising SOTL as pedagogy may facilitate the engagement of students as co-researchers and expose to scrutiny a “hidden curriculum” of current approaches to SoTL.

Preparing Students to Be Academicians

Medical schools have the responsibility of producing future leaders in academic medicine, yet few students choose academic medicine as a career. In 2009, the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) and the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences joined forces to provide students with a comprehensive introduction to careers in academic medicine through the redesign of an existing annual summer program for medical students. Since 2004, AMSA had hosted the Medical Education Leadership Institute, a weeklong program that attracted medical students from across the country who were interested in gaining teaching skills. In the redesigned sixth annual program, the authors expanded the curriculum to include principles of leadership, of medical education scholarship (or project development), and of academic medicine career-building. The purpose of this article is to describe the features of this comprehensive program and to share the lessons learned from its development and implementation. The authors also describe the multifaceted approach they used to evaluate the program, which featured a rubric they derived from social cognitive career theory.

Necessity and the Unexpected: SoTL Student-Faculty Collaboration in Writing Program Research

This essay describes how a team of faculty members and undergraduate students worked together to investigate key questions about the experiences students at our campus face as they transition from high school to college. We describe the process we employed in starting our project, and we draw some conclusions about the unexpected positive outcomes of our SoTL student-faculty partnership.

The Authorship Determination Process in Student–Faculty Collaborative Research

This quantitative study provides a description of current and best practices for authorship determination in student– faculty collaborative research. Doctoral students and faculty (N = 1,009) in education‐related disciplines indicated how authorship decisions are made in common practice, how authorship decisions should be made, and their levels of comfort with the process. Their responses highlighted complexities inherent in student–faculty collaborations and informed practical recommendations for counselor educators and students.

Intensive medical student involvement in short-term surgical trips provides safe and effective patient care: a case review

BackgroundThe hierarchical nature of medical education has been thought necessary for the safe care of patients. In this setting, medical students in particular have limited opportunities for experiential learning. We report on a student-faculty collaboration that has successfully operated an annual, short-term surgical intervention in Haiti for the last three years. Medical students were responsible for logistics and were overseen by faculty members for patient care. Substantial planning with local partners ensured that trip activities supplemented existing surgical services. A case review was performed hypothesizing that such trips could provide effective surgical care while also providing a suitable educational experience.FindingsOver three week-long trips, 64 cases were performed without any reported complications, and no immediate perioperative morbidity or mortality. A plurality of cases were complex urological procedures that required surgical skills that were locally unavailable (43%). Surgical productivity was twice that of comparable peer institutions in the region. Student roles in patient care were greatly expanded in comparison to those at U.S. academic medical centers and appropriate supervision was maintained.DiscussionThis demonstration project suggests that a properly designed surgical trip model can effectively balance the surgical needs of the community with an opportunity to expose young trainees to a clinical and cross-cultural experience rarely provided at this early stage of medical education. Few formalized programs currently exist although the experience above suggests the rewarding potential for broad-based adoption.

The construction of different classroom norms during Peer Instruction: Students perceive differences

This paper summarizes variations in instructors' implementation practices during Peer Instruction (PI) and shows how these differences in practices shape different norms of classroom interaction. We describe variations in classroom norms along three dimensions of classroom culture that are integral to Peer Instruction, emphasis on: (1) faculty-student collaboration, (2) student-student collaboration, and (3) sense-making vs answer-making. Based on interpretations by an observing researcher, we place three different PI classrooms along a continuum representing a set of possible norms. We then check these interpretations against students' perceptions of these environments from surveys collected at the end of the term. We find significant correspondence between the researchers' interpretations and students' perceptions of Peer Instruction in these environments. We find that variation in faculty practices can set up what students perceive as discernibly different norms. For interested instructors, concrete classroom practices are described that appear to encourage or discourage these norms.

The Ashes2Art Project: Digital Models of Fourth‐Century BCE Delphi, Greece

Ashes2Art represents an innovative collaboration between Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina, and Arkansas State University in Jonesboro that takes the intrinsic, if sometimes problematic, value of digital models and inverts the pedagogical model. Undergraduates create three‐dimensional computer models of ancient monuments based on published excavation reports, build “flythrough” and educational videos, take on‐site digital panoramas and photographs of architectural details, develop interdisciplinary lesson plans, write topical essays, and document their work online with extensive primary and secondary source bibliographies. Beyond the implicit value associated with hands‐on research and faculty–student collaboration, Ashes2Art aims to build a valuable online resource for discipline specialists and the general public. With the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the program currently is reconstructing monuments in the ancient Greek sanctuary at Delphi.

Power and Expertise: Student-Faculty Collaboration in Course Design and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

This essay describes the process of using a team of faculty and undergraduate students to redesign a university course, and outlines the research we conducted on student and faculty learning from the redesign process. We focus particular attention on power relations and issues of expertise, raising questions with implications for faculty who wish to engage students in similar course design projects, regardless of academic discipline, and who partner with undergraduates in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research.

Beyond Lip-service: An Operational Definition of “Learning-centered College”

Faculty, staff, and student perceptions of high-quality learning experiences were explored using focus groups attempting to define a “learning-centered” college. Common themes emerged suggesting that a successful learning community requires faculty-student collaboration, effective communication, critical thinking skills, reciprocal respect, faculty passion for learning, high expectations of both students and faculty, a variety of teaching and assessment strategies, and student engagement in and responsibility for learning. All groups stressed the need for learning opportunities outside the classroom in both intellectual and social situations. These themes provide a conceptual framework for future campus initiatives, which has broad relevance for other institutions.

Authorship Ethics: Issues and Suggested Guidelines for the Helping Professions

The authors review the literature and explore common ethical dilemmas related to publishing research. Varying standards are presented to assist professionals and students in their publication endeavors. Joint research collaboration in many graduate programs is encouraged and appears inevitable. Joint research activities may involve student–faculty collaboration or professional peer collaboration. Although many helping professions have ethics codes that address publication issues, there is no standard among them regarding the issue of authorship. Although it appears necessary to follow minimal codes of ethics regarding authorship, consideration of suggested guidelines and aspirational ethics may enhance the professional growth of mental health professionals and students in mental health programs.

Promoting psychiatric student nurse well-being.

Although students are often attracted to the profession of psychiatric nursing, they are rarely prepared for the realities associated with clinical seminars and direct clinical practice. Subsequently, student nurses commonly report the resurgence of painful life events or symptoms of psychological injury when learning about or witnessing patient behaviour. This paper underlines the importance of student-faculty collaboration when promoting and monitoring student nurse well-being. Along with providing descriptions and case vignettes depicting two specific forms of psychological injury, this paper suggests practical steps that are designed to promote student nurse well-being.

Lessons Learned in Curriculum Development: A New Perspective

Curriculum development is traditionally a faculty responsibility. However, students and residents can also conceptualize, implement, and evaluate curriculum. This issue of Dilemmas in Palliative Care Education highlights a studentinitiated second-year elective entitled the “Preceptorship on End of Life Care” at Louisiana State University School of Medicine. Rather than describe in detail the structure and methods of this course (as course materials have been accepted by the End of Life Physician Education Resource Center: kwww.eperc.mcw.edul), the authors were asked to reflect on their three years of experiences with this elective and write about the critical issues that they faced in the process of curriculum development, implementation, and sustaining change as student leaders graduate. In order to insure that the authors’ energy, vision, and passion for end-of-life education were retained in their writing, only limited editorial changes were requested. As you read the article by Taylor et al., I hope that you, like I, will breathe a sigh of relief knowing that there is a group of “soon-to-be MDs” who are ready and able to advance the quality of end-of-life care through education. I encourage you to share the Taylor et al. article with your students and residents to show them that curriculum change can be effected through student–faculty collaboration.