Examining and contrasting the cognitive activities engaged in undergraduate research experiences and lab courses

Abstract

While the positive outcomes of undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been extensively categorized, the mechanisms for those outcomes are less understood. Through lightly structured focus group interviews, we have extracted the cognitive tasks that students identify as engaging in during their UREs. We also use their many comparative statements about their coursework, especially lab courses, to evaluate their experimental physics-related cognitive tasks in those environments. We find there are a number of cognitive tasks consistently encountered in physics UREs that are present in most experimental research. These are seldom encountered in lab or lecture courses, with some notable exceptions. Having time to reflect and fix or revise, and having a sense of autonomy, were both repeatedly cited as key enablers of the benefits of UREs. We also identify tasks encountered in actual experimental research that are not encountered in UREs. We use these findings to identify opportunities for better integration of the cognitive tasks in UREs and lab courses, as well as discussing the barriers that exist. This work responds to extensive calls for science education to better develop students' scientific skills and practices, as well as calls to expose more students to scientific research.

Value added or misattributed? A multi-institution study on the educational benefit of labs for reinforcing physics content

“…First, goals to reinforce content often come hand-in-hand with increased structure, as it becomes important for students to observe a particular "correct" result [2]. When one examines the cognitive activities in which students are engaged while completing such lab course activities [12,34], they are dominated by following instructions to collect specified data using unfamiliar equipment, and following specified procedures to analyze the data and write up reports in a specified format. Although the relevant physics concepts were central to the thinking of the instructor that designed and built the experiments, those concepts get little, if any, attention from the student carrying out the assigned activities using that apparatus.…”

“…Research has shown that even small elements of open endedness in activities can improve student attitudes towards experimental physics [15]. Providing students with time, opportunity, and incentive to revise, troubleshoot, or explore by, for example, spreading a single lab experiment across multiple weeks may enable the desired skills focus [34,45]. Shifting the emphasis of the lab activities towards the quality of students' process rather than the product they obtain would be key to facilitating that development [34].…”

“…Providing students with time, opportunity, and incentive to revise, troubleshoot, or explore by, for example, spreading a single lab experiment across multiple weeks may enable the desired skills focus [34,45]. Shifting the emphasis of the lab activities towards the quality of students' process rather than the product they obtain would be key to facilitating that development [34]. It is unclear, however, whether entirely open-ended project-based courses would achieve the desired goals, especially when scaled for typical introductory course enrollments.…”

Introductory physics labs: We can do better

“…5 Although the finding may seem surprising at first, if you break down the elements of a typical lab activity, you realize that all the decision making involved in doing experimental physics is done for the students in advance. The relevant equations and principles are laid out in the preamble; students are told what value they should get for a particular measurement or given the equation to predict that value; they are told what data to collect and how to collect them; and often they are even told which buttons to press on the equipment to produce the desired output.…”

“…We explored that mental terrain through an extended set of interviews with focus groups with 32 students who carried out undergraduate research over a summer semester; all the students had already taken the introductory physics lab sequence. 5 We asked them some general questions about their experiences in research, such as What are you enjoying the most? What are you learning?…”