Moore Sean D, Teter Ken
Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, 32826.
Biochem Mol Biol Educ. 2014 Jul-Aug;42(4):331-8. doi: 10.1002/bmb.20802. Epub 2014 Jun 4.
Undergraduate research clearly enriches the educational development of participating students, but these experiences are limited by the inherent inefficiency of the standard one student-one mentor model for undergraduate research. Group-effort applied research (GEAR) was developed as a strategy to provide substantial numbers of undergraduates with meaningful research experiences. The GEAR curriculum delivers concept-driven lecture material and provides hands-on training in the context of an active research project from the instructor's laboratory. Because GEAR is structured as a class, participating students benefit from intensive, supervised research training that involves a built-in network of peer support and abundant contact with faculty mentors. The class format also ensures a relatively standardized and consistent research experience. Furthermore, meaningful progress toward a research objective can be achieved more readily with GEAR than with the traditional one student-one mentor model of undergraduate research because sporadic mistakes by individuals in the class are overshadowed by the successes of the group as a whole. Three separate GEAR classes involving three distinct research projects have been offered to date. In this article, we provide an overview of the GEAR format and review some of the recurring themes for GEAR instruction. We propose GEAR can serve as a template to expand student opportunities for life science research without sacrificing the quality of the mentored research experience.
本科研究无疑丰富了参与学生的教育发展，但这些经历受到本科研究标准的一对一学生-导师模式固有低效率的限制。集体努力应用研究（GEAR）作为一种策略而被开发出来，旨在为大量本科生提供有意义的研究经历。GEAR课程提供概念驱动的讲座材料，并在教师实验室的一个实际研究项目背景下提供实践培训。由于GEAR被构建为一门课程，参与的学生受益于强化的、有监督的研究培训，这种培训涉及一个内置的同伴支持网络以及与教师导师的大量接触。课程形式还确保了相对标准化和一致的研究经历。此外，与传统的一对一学生-导师本科研究模式相比，通过GEAR更容易在研究目标上取得有意义的进展，因为班级中个别学生偶尔出现的错误会被整个小组的成功所掩盖。迄今为止，已经开设了三个涉及三个不同研究项目的独立GEAR课程。在本文中，我们概述了GEAR形式，并回顾了一些GEAR教学中反复出现的主题。我们提出，GEAR可以作为一个模板，在不牺牲有导师指导的研究经历质量的情况下，扩大学生参与生命科学研究的机会。
