(49e) Initial Offerings of an Undergraduate Research Methods Class: Results and Experiences

In an effort to improve university recruiting and retention, our institution has focused on expanding the Honor’s College experience. This includes individual Honors experiences in each college and the University’s Honors College. The goal within the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS), is to focus the Honors experience on undergraduate research with an aim of broadening research opportunities and competitiveness of student applications for summer research programs, NSF REUs, internal/external research funding applications, participation in undergraduate research conferences, and preparing the students for graduate school. Many students (inside and outside of the honors program) have received credit for completing undergraduate research, but this is often a “stand-alone” course with no additional preparation and ill-defined outcomes. This approach does provide an opportunity for a laboratory experience, the research experience is greatly dependent on the mentoring provided informally by the research laboratory and the advisor. Parallel to the CEAS focus, the Honors College would like to increase the number of students completing their Honors Capstone (senior thesis/project). To respond to these goals, an “Introduction to STEM Research” course was developed and taught. This course was broadly designed to group mentor the students into the research process, find an advisor, prepare them for the subsequent in-laboratory research experience, and scaffold them towards completion of the Honors program. This course is broadly focused to provide a general approach to research and graduate school preparation appropriate for all majors in the Engineering College and other programs in hard science.

The Research Methods course has now been taught twice: Spring 2020 and Fall 2021. While offered through the Honors College/Engineering Honors, the course was open to all interested students. For the initial two offerings, there have been a total of nine students (six engineering and three others). Course topics included: finding a research mentor, literature search skills, using the scientific method for approaching a research problem, developing a research methodology, writing a funding proposal, delivering a research presentation, and selecting and applying for graduate school. Results, experiences, observations and student feedback from these initial offerings will be presented. All students found one (or more) research advisors and initiated their research in positions from volunteer, to for credit, and paid researcher. All students completed the required university safety training. Several students submitted successful applications for funding or undergraduate research programs. Student self-reported levels of experience on course elements were collected pre- and post-course. The average response increased by 1.31 points, and 22 pre-course “Don’t Knows” became zero “Don’t Knows” post-course. Results from the CURE tool for examining classroom aspects of undergraduate research were also used as a tool to benchmark this course against similar approaches to exposing undergraduates to research. “Benefits” from the CURE survey were compared to this course. Results indicated that this course helped prepare the students for undergraduate research similar to other courses and programs already included in CURE with similar goals. As such, this course offers an additional tool for educators to prepare students for research.