Each to Their Own CURE: Faculty Who Teach Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences Report Why You Too Should Teach a CURE

Abstract

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) meet national recommendations for integrating research experiences into life science curricula. As such, CUREs have grown in popularity and many research studies have focused on student outcomes from CUREs. Institutional change literature highlights that understanding faculty is also key to new pedagogies succeeding. To begin to understand faculty perspectives on CUREs, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 61 faculty who teach CUREs regarding why they teach CUREs, what the outcomes are, and how they would discuss a CURE with a colleague. Using grounded theory, participant responses were coded and categorized as tangible or intangible, related to both student and faculty-centered themes. We found that intangible themes were prevalent, and that there were significant differences in the emphasis on tangible themes for faculty who have developed their own independent CUREs when compared with faculty who implement pre-developed, national CUREs. We focus our results on the similarities and differences among the perspectives of faculty who teach these two different CURE types and explore trends among all participants. The results of this work highlight the need for considering a multi-dimensional framework to understand, promote, and successfully implement CUREs.

A course-based undergraduate research experience examining neurodegeneration in Drosophila melanogaster teaches students to think, communicate, and perform like scientists

“…CUREs have been shown to increase student learning as measured by pre-and post-course skills and knowledge inventories [8][9][10][11] and to have an impact on students' conceptions of scientific research, sense of independence, and persistence in STEM majors and careers [12][13][14][15]. CUREs also confer demonstrated benefits on faculty members by advancing their research objectives, and on the broader scientific community through discovery of novel scientific results [16]. As described previously, a CURE is distinguished from other inquiry-driven exercises by inclusion of the following five elements: scientific practices, discovery, broader relevance, collaboration, and iteration [3,12].…”

Developing Course-Based Research Experiences in Discipline-Based Education Research: Lessons Learned and Recommendations

“…Prior research has shown that instructors personally benefit from teaching CREs ( 13 , 14 ), and in our opinion, we benefitted from teaching these CREs. Instructing a CRE can be an enjoyable way to teach, often feeling more like leading a research team than teaching a class.…”

“…By definition, CREs merge teaching and research and should have both pedagogical and research goals ( 13 , 14 , 16 , 17 ). Pedagogical goals consist of student cognitive, psychomotor, and affective learning and can be measured by assessing student outcomes such as their ability to collect data, their ability to write a manuscript, or how much they enjoy participating in the CRE ( 16 ).…”

“…We highlight three reasons why developing DBER CREs could be advantageous: 1) By integrating education research into a formal course, DBER CREs merge teaching and research, which can directly benefit DBER faculty if their teaching responsibilities include an education course. Course-based research experiences have been shown to contribute positively to promotion and tenure, and students in a CRE can collect and analyze data that can benefit a faculty’s research program, particularly for faculty who develop CREs based on their own research ( 13 , 14 ). 2) The nascent state of the field of DBER means that there are many accessible research questions that are ripe for exploration.…”

CRISPR-Cas Technology In and Out of the Classroom

“…[12][13][14][15][16] CUREs often have students plan and execute a series of experiments that are directed at solving a scientific problem, sometimes in direct connection with the research interests of the faculty teaching the course. 4,14,[17][18][19][20][21] Often, these research projects are a quarter, semester, or year in length and guide students through one or more aspects of a larger research project. In some cases, these experiences can be used to generate both laboratory reagents and data as well as data pertaining to student outcomes resulting from the implementation of CUREs.…”