Inspiring Student Inquiry in Courses that Matter: The Case f

High-Impact Practices

positively correlated with

• High GPA
• Persistence to graduation
• Pursuit of advanced degrees
• Positive college experience
• “Meaningful philosophy of life”
• Leadership skills
• Communication skills

The benefits are most pronounced for students underrepresented in

higher education:

students of color, low-income & first-gen students

Employers say bachelor's-degree holders lack basic proficiencies:

Skill areas in which college grads are said to be lacking:

• written & oral communication
• decision-making
• problem-solving
• analysis
• research skills
• applying knowledge to new situations
• adaptability
• managing multiple priorities

The very areas in which undergraduate researchers excel!

Creativity

Critical Thinking

Independent Thought

Logic

Problem Solving

Disciplinary Excitement

Intellectual Curiosity

Analysis

Communication

Leadership

Students conducting research or inquiry-based projects in the curriculum

approaches to learning based on students’ investigations of questions, scenarios or problems, with instructor as facilitator

"Undergraduate education should adopt the ‘Student as Scholar’ model throughout the curriculum, where scholar is conceived in terms of an attitude, an intellectual posture, and a frame of mind."

Faculty-Mentored

mentor = trusted & wise

counselor/teacher

Original

Appropriate for the Discipline(s)

Disseminated

Active learning environments with focus on "actively contested questions" (Kuh)

Authentic discovery processes with strong faculty-student interaction

Ultimately, student-designed projects and assignments

Require research

of all students

With a curriculum that prepares students for authentic research

A research-rich curriculum of scaffolded skills

• higher assessment scores
• greater content knowledge
• stronger research skills

Gregerman, Sandra R. “Improving the Academic Success of Diverse Students Through Undergraduate Research.” Council on Undergraduate Research Quarterly, 1999. Web.

Harkness, Suzanne S. “Experiential Learning: Undergraduate Research Methodology Instruction Through Directed Research and Mentoring.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, 2007. Web.

Hathaway, Russel S., Biren Nagda, and Sandra R. Gregerman. “The Relationship of Undergraduate Research Participation to Graduate and Professional Educational Pursuit: An Empirical Study.”Journal of College Student Development, 2002. Web.

Hodge, David, Kira Pasquesi, Marissa Hirsh, and Paul LePore. “From Convocation to Capstone: Developing the Student as Scholar.” Keynote address at the AAC&U Network for Academic Renewal Conference, Long Beach, CA, 2007. Web.

Karukstis, Kerry and Timothy Elgren, Eds. Developing and Sustaining a Research-Supportive Curriculum: A Compendium of Successful Practices. Washington, DC: Council on Undergraduate Research, 2007. Print.

Karukstis, Kerry K and Thomas J. Wenzel. “Enhancing Research in the Chemical Sciences at Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions.” Journal of Chemical Education. 81.4 (2004).

Kuh, George D. High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter for All Students. Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), 2008.

Langford, Julie. “Models of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities: The Severan Database Project.” Creative Inquiry in the Arts & Humanities: Models of Undergraduate Research. Naomi Yavneh Klos, Jenny Olin Shanahan, and Greg Young (Eds.) Washington, DC: Council on Undergraduate Research Press, 2011. 49-58. Print.

Inquiry-Based Learning

Undergraduate Research =

a range of scholarly opportunities

in 3 general categories

Students collaborating/assisting with faculty members’ scholarship

(Stephenson)

Students pursuing their own, mostly independent projects,

mentored by faculty

Inspiring Student Inquiry in Courses that Matter:

The Case for Research Across the Curriculum

not merely having students

"do projects”

but encouraging deep, discipline-based ways of thinking and doing

(Stephenson)

Jenny Shanahan, Ph.D.

Research in the Curriculum moves a High-Impact Practice from the Periphery to the Center

Significant research experiences are too often

Optional or Exclusive "boutique" experiences

for few students with time, self-confidence, GPA

Missing the very students who could benefit most

Non-credit-bearing, at least for faculty workload

(Osborn)

Director of

Undergraduate Research

Bridgewater State University

Inquiry-based curriculum =

a JUST,

cost-effective & efficient way to offer research opportunities to all students

ensuring access for all students to one of the most valuable experiences in college

Each assignment and

each course is part of an integrated scholarly experience.

(Hodge, Pasquesi, Hirsh, and LePore)

A research-rich, inquiry-based curriculum is not a haphazard set of research experiences

and it's not simply about requiring students to write more research papers

They go beyond

advice-giving

& knowledge-dispensing: they share power by serving as sponsor and advocate.

They offer responses that remind students that the work is their own.

(Gonzales)

The most effective mentors Promote Shared Power

Students who engage in “high-impact” practices show significantly greater learning outcomes than similar students without those opportunities.

Focus is on student's learning process & intellectual engagement

Student participates in the creation and discovery of knowledge.

(Gregerman; Hathaway, Nagda, & Gregerman; Kuh; Locks & Gregerman; Nagda, Gurin, & Lopez)

• Confronting novel & important ideas
• Collecting and analyzing data, sources, etc
• Applying research to real problems
• Working iteratively & recursively, with frequent & meaningful feedback
• Increasing student ownership over time

(Karukstis and Elgren)

Characteristics of High-Impact Undergraduate Research

Bridgewater State Univ

Sculpture 1 class

(Astin; Brownell & Swaner; Kuh)

Rochester Institute of Technology

Experimental Psychology class

Students share what they have learned in order to

• Take pride in & responsibility for the work

• Participate in the discourse community

• Answer questions & engage in broader dialogue

• Refine their thinking in response to others’ ideas

Revising Assignments & Courses for Higher Impact

Students learn the epistemology, processes, methods, resources, and accepted products of scholars in their discipline(s)

• Adaptability

• Communication skills

Half of employers last year had trouble finding college grads qualified to fill positions.

• Ability (and willingness)

to solve complex problems

• Infuses creative process with research
• Students research effective toy design and conduct interviews at Hasbro
• Research applied to modeling and creating toys
• Toys donated to orphanage in service-learning trip

(Fischer)

Research essay PLUS

• campus presentation
• creation of digital/online resource
• using tools & resources of experts

Research-based practicum (CBR)

Applying research literature to new contexts

Empirical research

• Trouble with core concepts in upper-level classes
• 200-level course had used canned experiments
• Now students read empirical articles & design an experiment
• Each group comes up with hypothesis, research design, sample, and proposed analyses

Students who engage in

research show gains in

Creativity

Critical Thinking

Independent Thought

Logic

Problem Solving

Disciplinary Excitement

Intellectual Curiosity

Analysis

Communication

Leadership

(Bauer & Bennett; Kuh; Lei & Chuang; Mabrouk)

(Karukstis and Elgren)

Why?

• Research involves students in “actively contested” questions

• It inspires the sense of excitement that comes from working to answer important questions

Components of a

research-rich curriculum

(Fischer)

• Conducting research teaches highly valued, real-world methods, skills, tools, etc.

(Bauer & Bennett; Kuh; Lei & Chuang; Lopatto; Mabrouk)

(Kuh)

Creating a research-rich curriculum

Early & frequent exposure to research

Articulating appropriate research questions with an understanding of context

Designing and executing approaches to a research question

Critically interpreting source material and utilizing it in iterative ways to devise new questions

Communicating clearly the nature of the work and its significance

(Harkness)

(Fischer)

Despite mountains of evidence about the ineffectiveness of lecturing in student learning, we continue to make it central to our class time.

What matters is engaged interaction between faculty & students.

“Backward Design” curriculum revision: scaffolded research courses—from introductory to content-rich courses, to seminars and theory/methods, to thesis

Meaningful “gateway” courses and graduated, varied inquiry-based assignments throughout curriculum

Works Cited

Locks, Angela M. and Sandra R. Gregerman. “Undergraduate Research as an Institutional Retention Strategy.” Creating Effective Undergraduate Research Programs in Science. Roman Taraban and Richard L. Blanton (Eds.) New York: Teachers College Press, 2008. Print.

Astin, Alexander W. What Matters in College: Four Critical Years Revisited. Hoboken, NJ: Jossey-Bass, 1997. Print.

Bauer, Karen and Joan Bennett. “Alumni Perception Used to Assess Undergraduate Research Experience.” Journal of Higher Education 74.2 (2003): 210-230. Print.

Brownell, Jayne E. and Lynn E. Swaner. Five High-Impact Practices: Research on Learning Outcomes, Completion, and Quality. Association of American Colleges and Universities, 2010. Web.

Fischer, Karin. “A College Degree Sorts Job Applicants, but Employers Wish It Meant More.” Chronicle of Higher Education Mar 4, 2013.

Gonzàlez, Cristina. “When is a mentor like a monk?” Academe 92.3 (2006): 29-32. Print.

Malachowski, Mitch. “Perspectives on Undergraduate Research

Culture and Institutional Change.” Council on Undergraduate Research Workshop on Institutionalizing UR for State Systems and Consortia, Kenyon College, OH, 2012. Print.

Nagda Biren A., Patricia Gurin, and Gretchen Lopez.

“Transformative Pedagogy for Democracy and Social Justice.” Race, Ethnicity, and Education 6.2 (2003): 165-190. Print.

Osborn, Jeffrey M. “Developing an Institutional Infrastructure to

Support Excellence in Undergraduate Research.” Presented at the Council on Undergraduate Research Workshop on Institutionalizing Undergraduate Research for State Systems and Consortia, Kenyon College, OH, 2012. Print.

Stephenson, Neil. “Introduction to Inquiry Based Learning.” Teach Inquiry, 2012. Web.

Tinto, Vincent. Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures

of Student Attrition. University of Chicago Press, 1994. Print.

Wiggins, Grant and Jay McTigue. Understanding by Design, 2nd

edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2005. Print.