Entering research: A course that creates community and structure for beginning undergraduate researchers in the STEM disciplines

Abstract

Undergraduate research experiences have been shown to enhance the educational experience and retention of college students, especially those from underrepresented populations. However, many challenges still exist relative to building community among students navigating large institutions. We developed a novel course called Entering Research that creates a learning community to support beginning undergraduate researchers and is designed to parallel the Entering Mentoring course for graduate students, postdocs, and faculty serving as mentors of undergraduate researchers. The course serves as a model that can be easily adapted for use across the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines using a readily available facilitator's manual. Course evaluations and rigorous assessment show that the Entering Research course helps students in many ways, including finding a mentor, understanding their place in a research community, and connecting their research to their course work in the biological and physical sciences. Students in the course reported statistically significant gains in their skills, knowledge, and confidence as researchers compared with a control group of students, who also were engaged in undergraduate research but not enrolled in this course. In addition, the faculty and staff members who served as facilitators of the Entering Research course described their experience as rewarding and one they would recommend to their colleagues.

Figure 1.

The Entering Research course student learning objectives.

Figure 2.

Entering Research course outline. Course outlines for both semesters are presented for reference. The beginning undergraduate research experience was investigated, so only data from semester I are reported in this paper. Instructional materials for both semesters are available in the Entering Research facilitator's manual (Branchaw et al., 2010).

Figure 3.

Student satisfaction with the Entering Research course. Each bar represents the mean and standard error of survey responses from students who took the first semester of Entering Research (2006–08; n = 64). Students were asked to report how helpful each of the topics was to their learning about research on a scale of 1 through 4 (1 = Not Helpful; 2 = Somewhat Helpful; 3 = Helpful; 4 = Very Helpful).

Figure 4.

Student self-assessment of confidence, skill, and knowledge as a researcher. Averages of pre- and postsurvey results are presented. Each bar represents the mean and standard error of survey responses from students who took the first semesters of Entering Research (2006–08; n = 64). Students were asked to report their conficence, skill, or knowledge as a researcher on a scale of 1 through 5 (1 = None; 2 = Not Very; 3 = Moderate; 4 = High; 5 = Very High). Different letters within a category (confidence, skills, knowledge) are significant at p < 0.001.

Figure 5.

Student self-assessment of confidence as a researcher. Averages of pre- and postsurvey results for each confidence question are presented. Each bar represents the mean and standard error of survey responses from students who took the first semester of Entering Research (2006–08; n = 64). Students were asked to report their confidence as a researcher on a scale of 1 through 5 (1 = None; 2 = Not Very; 3 = Moderate; 4 = High; 5 = Very High). An asterisk indicates a significant difference at p < 0.01.

Figure 6.

Student self-assessment of skill as a researcher. Averages of pre- and postsurvey results for each skill question are presented. Each bar represents the mean and standard error of survey responses from students who took the first semester of Entering Research (2006–08; n = 64). Students were asked to report their skill as a researcher on a scale of 1 through 5 (1 = None; 2 = Not Very; 3 = Moderate; 4 = High; 5 = Very High). An asterisk indicates a significant difference at p < 0.01.

Figure 7.

Student self-assessment of knowledge as a researcher. Averages of pre- and postsurvey results for each knowledge question are presented. Each bar represents the mean and standard error of survey responses from students who took the first semester of Entering Research (2006–08; n = 64). Students were asked to report their knowledge as a researcher on a scale of 1 through 5 (1 = None; 2 = Not Very; 3 = Moderate; 4 = High; 5 = Very High). An asterisk indicates a significant difference at p < 0.01.

Figure 8.

Areas of significant difference between Entering Research and a comparison group of students. Averages of postsurvey results are presented. Each bar represents the mean and standard error of survey responses from students who took the first semester of Entering Research (2006–08) (n = 64) and from students who did an independent research experience as part of introductory biology (n = 144). Students were asked to report their confidence, skill, or knowledge as a researcher on a scale of 1 through 5 (1 = None; 2 = Not Very; 3 = Moderate; 4 = High; 5 = Very High). A single asterisk indicates a significant difference at p < 0.05; a double asterisk indicates a significant difference at p < 0.01. All other areas of confidence, skills, and knowledge were not significantly different within our data set.