Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996.
Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, Sacramento, CA 95819.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2023 Dec;22(4):ar46. doi: 10.1187/cbe.23-03-0042.
Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are attractive solutions for scaling undergraduate research experiences at primarily undergraduate teaching institutions, where resources for faculty research activities can be limited. The Sustainable Interdisciplinary Research to Inspire Undergraduate Success (SIRIUS) project is a unique program that integrates CUREs, coordinated around a local real-world problem, throughout a biology department's curricula. The CUREs are scaffolded to provide all biology majors with multiple opportunities to engage in scientific investigations as they advance through introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses. In this mixed methods, cross-sectional study, we explore students' perceptions of the authenticity of their experiences as they progress through the SIRIUS CUREs. Triangulated data collected from two instruments indicated that students in advanced courses recognized more involvement in research activities and perceived greater authenticity in the science they were performing compared with introductory and intermediate students. Intermediate and advanced students perceived more opportunities for independence; however, experiences with failure and the influence these experiences had on the perceptions of authenticity was primarily observed with advanced students. This study contributes to the growing literature on CUREs with a focus on students from a primarily undergraduate institution with multiple minority-serving designations.
基于课程的本科生研究经历 (CUREs) 是在以本科教学为主的机构中扩大本科生研究经历的有吸引力的解决方案，因为这些机构的教师研究活动资源可能有限。可持续跨学科研究以激励本科生成功 (SIRIUS) 项目是一个独特的项目，它将以当地现实世界问题为中心的 CUREs 整合到整个生物学系的课程中。这些 CUREs 是有层次的，为所有生物学专业的学生提供了多次机会，让他们在入门、中级和高级课程中参与科学调查。在这项混合方法、横断面研究中，我们探讨了学生在 SIRIUS CUREs 中随着学习的进展对其经历真实性的看法。从两个工具中收集的三角数据表明，与入门和中级学生相比，高级课程的学生在研究活动中表现出更多的参与度，并认为他们所进行的科学更具真实性。中级和高级学生认为有更多的独立机会；然而，与中级学生相比，主要是高级学生经历了更多的失败，以及这些经历对真实性认知的影响。这项研究为 CUREs 的不断发展的文献做出了贡献，重点是来自以本科教学为主的机构的学生，这些机构有多个少数族裔服务的指定。
