The Role of Collaborative Student Research on the Development of 21^st Century Skills

Abstract

Collaborative student research takes place in educational settings where the teacher directs the laboratory (traditional class) or allows the students to research a topic (non-traditional class). This study examines the role of collaborative student research in two separate settings: in high school (grades 9-12) and in college undergraduate institutions. These experiences include college level Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) and high school level Authentic Science Research (ASR) programs. These programs promote collaboration among student peers, teachers, professors, graduate students, post-docs, community members, and industry experts. Benefits of these collaborative student research programs may include development of skills aligned with educational standards such as Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards. This study examines the short and long-term outcome of student engagement in collaborative student research experiences, and offers new insight regarding the impact that these unique experiences have on 21st century skill development. Students in this study have participated in non-traditional, research-based experiences ranging from 8 weeks to 4 years. Pre-post and retrospective student survey data was examined qualitatively and quantitatively to better understand the role in which collaborative student research experiences play in the formation of 21st century skills. Results of the study support the notion that collaborative student research experiences offer students meaningful interdisciplinary benefits, and these experiences are more than just a means of recruiting students into science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

Research Experiences for Students: Interdisciplinary skill development to prepare the future workforce for success

“…This study, when combined with previous evaluation results from CRISP REU programs, shows that participation in research experiences yields a multitude of benefits outside traditional scientific perspectives [8]. Measuring and understanding the value of these cross-disciplinary gains is an important aspect of REU program evaluation and CRISP now targets these gains as primary programming goals rather than incidental effects of the research experience.…”

“…The specific 21 st century skills which were targeted as part of this study were: creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, general learning, scientific reasoning, collaboration, communication, information and communication technology, information literacy, good citizenship, insight into life and career goals, as well as personal and social responsibility [8]. Students were asked to rate the degree to which they felt their experiences in the REU program included activities or events related to each of these 21 st century skills and then they were asked to choose the three skills which were the most valuable to them during their REU experience.…”

“…A prior research study by the authors [8] explored the role of soft skills in the CRISP REU experience retrospectively by examining student survey responses to general satisfaction questions that were not specifically designed to directly probe students' perceptions of soft skill development. This previous research illustrated that though the 21 st Century Skills Framework for conceptualizing the development of soft skills is relatively new, REU programs have been inherently targeting such skills since the beginning of the program.…”