Damiani Sarah, Freije Giorgio, Rudner Adam D, Wheaton Keith, D'Ambrosio Lisa M
Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Ottawa Institute of Systems Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
J Microbiol Biol Educ. 2025 Aug 21;26(2):e0007325. doi: 10.1128/jmbe.00073-25. Epub 2025 Jun 11.
Apprenticeship research experiences (AREs) provide undergraduate students with real-world opportunities to engage in authentic experiment-based research as integral members of the supervisor's laboratory team. While AREs have been proposed to support students' confidence and competencies in the laboratory, they can also present practical barriers for effective pedagogical and fair implementation in undergraduate programs. For example, as AREs are conducted in authentic research environments independent of a course context, they are often not equipped with the pedagogical structure and guided instruction to best support student learning. Moreover, students frequently compete to secure a limited number of ARE placements such as summer research positions, honors thesis students, or scholarship recipients. As a result, many students who aim to complete an ARE within their undergraduate degree may never receive the opportunity, raising questions of factors that may impact fair and impartial student eligibility for these research experiences. To address these barriers, our faculty developed an innovative undergraduate course that integrates a discovery-based training laboratory component and an ARE placement component directly within its structure. Here, we present the details of this unique course structure and provide practical resources and suggestions for implementation in similar laboratory courses in science-related undergraduate programs.
学徒制研究经历（AREs）为本科生提供了参与真实实验研究的机会，使他们成为导师实验室团队的重要成员。虽然AREs被认为有助于增强学生在实验室中的信心和能力，但在本科课程中，它们也可能给有效的教学和公平实施带来实际障碍。例如，由于AREs是在独立于课程背景的真实研究环境中进行的，它们往往缺乏最佳支持学生学习的教学结构和指导。此外，学生们常常竞争有限数量的ARE名额，如暑期研究岗位、荣誉论文学生或奖学金获得者。因此，许多旨在在本科学位期间完成ARE的学生可能永远没有机会，这引发了关于可能影响学生公平公正获得这些研究经历资格的因素的问题。为了解决这些障碍，我们的教师开发了一门创新的本科课程，该课程在其结构中直接整合了基于发现的培训实验室部分和ARE安置部分。在此，我们介绍这一独特课程结构的细节，并为在与科学相关的本科项目的类似实验室课程中实施提供实用资源和建议。
