Connected While Distant: Networking CUREs Across Classrooms to Create Community and Empower Students

Abstract

Connections, collaborations, and community are key to the success of individual scientists as well as transformative scientific advances. Intentionally building these components into STEM education can better prepare future generations of researchers. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are a new and fast-growing teaching practice in STEM that can expand opportunities for undergraduate students to gain research skills. Because they engage all students in a course in an authentic research experience focused on a relevant scientific problem, CUREs provide an opportunity to foster community among students while promoting critical thinking skills and positively influencing their identities as scientists. Here, we review CUREs in the biological sciences that were developed as multi-institutional networks, and highlight the benefits gained by both students and instructors through participation in a CURE network. Throughout, we introduce Squirrel-Net, a network of ecology-focused and field-based CUREs that intentionally create connections among students and instructors. Squirrel-Net CUREs can also be scaffolded into the curriculum to form connections between courses, and are easily transitioned to distance-based delivery. Future assessments of networked CUREs like Squirrel-Net will help elucidate how CURE networks create community and how a cultivated research community impacts students’ performance, perceptions of science, and sense of belonging. We hypothesize networked CUREs have the potential to create a broader sense of belonging among students and instructors alike, which could result in better science and more confident scientists.

Use of Course-based undergraduate research experiences model to enhance research interest of Hong Kong health professional undergraduate students

“…To the best of our knowledge, this was the first CUREs study carried out in the universities of Hong Kong. Consistent with previous findings from the universities of Western countries (Beatty, Ballen, Driessen, Schwartz, & Graze, 2021;Connors et al, 2021), CUREs participants agreed that they have moderate to a very large gain in various areas.…”

Response to Messageret al. (2022)

“…CURE networks -i.e., networks through which CURE data are collected and shared across multiple institutionsare increasingly accessible options for instructors to incorporate undergraduate research and collect ecological data within their courses (Connors et al 2021). These networks are often already developed and themselves part of studies on effective scientific teaching (Bangera and Brownell 2014; Corwin et al 2015;Buchanan and Fisher 2022;Patrick et al 2023).…”

“…These networks are often already developed and themselves part of studies on effective scientific teaching (Bangera and Brownell 2014; Corwin et al 2015;Buchanan and Fisher 2022;Patrick et al 2023). As such, CURE networks can support, and lower barriers for, instructors looking to collect ecological data by providing training and teaching resources, data collection protocols and equipment, and centralized databases (Connors et al 2021). Many of these resources and datasets arose or expanded during the COV-ID-19 pandemic (e.g., Dizney et al 2020Dizney et al , 2021, resulting in a deliberate focus on flexible teaching modalities and equipment needs.…”

“A Place to Be Heard and to Hear”: the Humanities Collaboratory as a Model for Cross-College Cooperation and Relationship-Building in Undergraduate Research

“…Building from this focus on interinstitutional connections, this study attends to relationality and community as central to UR, though yet underexplored in humanities research contexts. Increasing attention has been paid to the importance of collaboration and community to UR, especially for first-year students (Balster et al, 2010;Kobulnicky & Dale 2016;Sandquist et al, 2019;Rubush & Stone, 2020;Lawrence et al, 2020).Taking a collectivist approach to UR not only aids in inclusion (Malotky et al, 2020;Connors et al, 2021), but also encourages the development of teambased research skills, strengthens students' sense of belonging, and increases student interest in pursuing additional education or careers that involve disciplinary research. Some scholars have worked specifically to develop UR opportunities, or analyze existing programs, through the lens of CoPs, considering how the apprenticeship model of UR lends itself well to thinking through questions of community, belonging, and disciplinary transformation in and outside of the classroom space (Hunter et al, 2006;John & Creighton, 2013;Auchincloss et al, 2014;Gardner et al, 2015).…”