“How Do We Do This at a Distance?!” A Descriptive Study of Remote Undergraduate Research Programs during COVID-19

Erickson, Olivia; Cole, Rebecca B; Isaacs, Jared M; Alvarez‐Clare, Silvia; Arnold, Jonathan; Augustus‐Wallace, Allison; Ayoob, Joseph C.; Berkowitz, Alan; Branchaw, Janet; Burgio, Kevin R.; Cannon, Charles H.; Ceballos, Ruben Michael; Cohen, Sarah; Coller, Hilary A.; Disney, Jane; Doze, Van A.; Eggers, Margaret J.; Farina, Stacy C.; Ferguson, Edwin L.; Gray, Jeffrey J.; Greenberg, Jean T.; Hoffmann, Alexander; Jensen-Ryan, Danielle; Kao, Robert M.; Keene, Alex C.; Kowalko, Johanna E.; Lopez, Steven A.; Mathis, Camille; Minkara, Mona S.; Murren, Courtney J.; Ondrechen, Mary Jo; Ordóñez, Patricia; Osano, Anne; Padilla-Crespo, Elizabeth; Palchoudhury, Soubantika; Qin, Hong; Ramírez-Lugo, Juan S.; Reithel, Jennifer; Shaw, Colin A.; Smith, Amber; Smith, Rosemary J.; Summers, Adam P.; Tsien, Fern; Dolan, Erin L.

doi:10.1187/cbe.21-05-0125

Cited by 21 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Research on 23 remote 2020 summer research programs identified technology issues as one of the challenges that limited participants’ experiences. Some students did not have suitable Internet connections, access to computers with sufficient computing capacity or credentialing to allow access to essential software [ 13 ]. One can imagine students struggling with the time pressures it takes to troubleshoot Internet issues or set up new services.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Researchers are examining how these changes have impacted student well-being [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ], learning and academic engagement [ 6 , 7 , 8 ], relationships with peers [ 9 ] and longer-term outcomes, such as retention and delayed graduation [ 10 , 11 ]. Few studies have examined how COVID-19 has impacted undergraduate research training [ 12 , 13 , 14 ], and few have focused on initial experiences during the early months of the pandemic [ 15 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected undergraduate researchers is poorly understood [ 13 , 14 , 33 , 34 ]. To advance knowledge, we developed and administered a survey to over 1000 undergraduate students across the country who were doing or planning to do research in spring and/or summer 2020.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19

Grineski

Morales

Collins

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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Undergraduate research is a high-impact practice on college campuses. How the COVID-19 pandemic has affected undergraduate researchers’ progress is poorly understood. We examine how demographics, academic characteristics, research disruptions and faculty mentorship are associated with four barriers to research progress. Data are drawn from a survey of over 1000 undergraduate student researchers across the US. We examine students who actively continued to conduct faculty-mentored research during mid-March/April 2020 (n = 485). Using generalized estimating equations that control clustering by institution, we found economic hardship, discomfort teleconferencing, lower quality mentors, sexual minority status and higher grade point averages were associated with motivation problems. Economic hardship, serious illness, Internet connection issues, a lack of face-to-face meetings and lower a frequency of mentor–mentee communication were associated with a time crunch with regard to conducting research. Discomfort teleconferencing, Internet connection issues, a lack of face-to-face meetings and decrease in research workload were associated with task uncertainty. Economic hardship, serious illness and being an engineering major were associated with lacking needed tools for the research. In sum, economic hardship was an important correlate of research barriers, as were communication challenges and sexual minority status. Results can inform practical actions by research program directors and faculty undergraduate research mentors.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19

Grineski

Morales

Collins

et al. 2022

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is also amenable to in-person, hybrid, and remote models of instruction, with internet access being the only requirement for implementation of the project. In light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on both classroom instruction and independent research opportunities for students [ 30 ], this flexibility is beneficial for undergraduate coursework in several STEM disciplines, as well as for summer and academic-year research programs that have yet to return to full capacity due to ongoing concerns over the pandemic and that may therefore wish to expand this approach into more extensive independent research projects for students.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bioinformatic Approach to Enhance Undergraduate Student Understanding of the Cancer-Immunity Cycle

Hargadon

2022

J Canc Educ

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Recent advances in tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy have generated significant interest in the field of immuno-oncology. With the promise of these advances comes an increasing need to train the next generation of scientists who will support ongoing basic and clinical research efforts in this field. At this time, however, there remains a documented underrepresentation of tumor immunology as a core content area in many undergraduate science curricula. This study introduces a novel pedagogical strategy that aimed to promote undergraduate student interest in tumor immunology in ways that support recent education guidelines published by the American Association of Immunologists, and it highlights the efficacy of this approach in enhancing student understanding of concepts relevant to the Cancer-Immunity Cycle. Using RNA-sequencing data obtained from clinical specimens catalogued in The Cancer Genome Atlas, students performed Kaplan–Meier survival analyses to identify Cancer-Immunity Cycle genes with prognostic significance. After correlating expression of such genes with tumor-infiltrating immune cell populations using a bioinformatic tool to deconvolute whole tumor-transcriptome data, students undertook an exercise that requires integration of course content and findings from the primary literature to generate hypotheses about the influence of genetic factors and immune cell types on the Cancer-Immunity Cycle and overall patient outcome. A pre-/post-project assessment instrument demonstrated the efficacy of this approach as a means of improving undergraduate student understanding of core cancer immunology concepts. This report describes these data and discusses potential ways in which the project can be adapted to extend its utility to broad and diverse student populations. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13187-022-02221-4.

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“…Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many undergraduates, including those at the University of Washington, spent nearly a full year learning remotely, and undergraduate researchers lost their on-campus work–study research positions. , We set out to re-employ the work–study undergraduate researchers at our Institute by offering a virtual research opportunity, which has been reported to be beneficial and valuable for students in other undergraduate research programs. , However, we needed a different approach than our previous apprenticeship model, as the frequent 1:1 contact central to that model was impractical to implement remotely and too few mentors were free to individually work with each undergraduate at our Institute. Previous cohort-based research courses in computational protein design, in which multiple students are taught by a smaller number of mentors, enabled them to accommodate greater numbers of students and have shown significant success in increasing students’ enthusiasm for biochemistry and computational biology. − We adopted this cohort-based model and curated a completely remote computational curriculum that allowed students to take ownership of their portion of a team research project while learning from each other.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing Computational Protein Design Literacy through Cohort-Based Learning for Undergraduate Students

et al. 2022

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Undergraduate research experiences can improve student success in graduate education and STEM careers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, undergraduate researchers at our institution and many others lost their work–study research positions due to interruption of in-person research activities. This imposed a financial burden on the students and eliminated an important learning opportunity. To address these challenges, we created a paid, fully remote, cohort-based research curriculum in computational protein design. Our curriculum used existing protein design methods as a platform to first educate and train undergraduate students and then to test research hypotheses. In the first phase, students learned computational methods to assess the stability of designed protein assemblies. In the second phase, students used a larger data set to identify factors that could improve the accuracy of current protein design algorithms. This cohort-based program created valuable new research opportunities for undergraduates at our institute and enhanced the undergraduates’ feeling of connection with the lab. Students learned transferable and useful skills such as literature review, programming basics, data analysis, hypothesis testing, and scientific communication. Our program provides a model of structured computational research training opportunities for undergraduate researchers in any field for organizations looking to expand educational access.

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“How Do We Do This at a Distance?!” A Descriptive Study of Remote Undergraduate Research Programs during COVID-19

Abstract: This study describes the design and implementation of remote Summer undergraduate research programs during the COVID-19 pandemic, including program strengths and recommendations for improvement from the perspectives of undergraduate researchers.

Cited by 21 publications

References 33 publications

A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19

A US National Study of Barriers to Science Training Experienced by Undergraduate Students during COVID-19

A Bioinformatic Approach to Enhance Undergraduate Student Understanding of the Cancer-Immunity Cycle

Increasing Computational Protein Design Literacy through Cohort-Based Learning for Undergraduate Students

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