Partners in Research: Developing a Model for Undergraduate Faculty-Student Collaboration

Abstract

Maintaining scholarship while delivering an undergraduate nursing program is a challenge for nursing faculty. In this paper, we describe an approach that involves undergraduate nursing students in a program of faculty research, which evaluates new approaches to teaching and learning. Students work with faculty to develop a research proposal, identifying specific questions and exploring relevant literature. Projects may include original data collection with faculty supervision, or secondary analysis of existing datasets. Foci have included partnership learning between nursing students and older adults, models of sustainability for a traveling health clinic, and experiences of aging. Findings and recommendations feed into the broader faculty research agenda, provide a foundation for subsequent projects, and inform further development of educational programs. Students have presented at local and national conferences and developed papers for publication based on this joint work. We describe the benefits and challenges of these partnerships, drawing upon student and faculty reflections.

Reciprocity, Incentives, and Off-Ramps: Faculty–Undergraduate Collaboration and Comparative Politics Research

“…Discussions of faculty–undergraduate collaboration sometimes advocate providing research opportunities to many undergraduates (e.g., Reitmaier Koehler et al 2015). We doubt that the practice of long-term research projects can be scaled up to serve a large number of students; however, we find it to be a valuable model to serve some undergraduates, regardless of their career plans.…”

“…The type of collaboration described in this article has two distinctive elements. First, many projects involve collaboration in only some stages of the research process, whether that is a faculty member helping an undergraduate design and collect data but not participating as coauthors (Miller 2014, 229–31) or a student initiating a project that a professor later joins as a coauthor (Reitmaier Koehler et al 2015, 134). We were unable to find any academic literature that describes faculty–undergraduate collaborations that covered the entire research process or that discusses the distinct challenges and benefits of such a comprehensive collaboration 1 .…”

Second-degree nursing student engagement and the notion of consumerism

“…A study by Allari et al (2020) highlighted that demonstration of caring practices on the part of faculty is significantly correlated with positive student outcomes as a predictor of future caring practices on the part of students in the transition to professional practice. Koehler et al (2015) highlighted opportunities for partnerships in research activities as of mutual benefit to both students and their faculty. While such partnerships invoke student retention and develop student skills in the area of critical inquiry and evidenced based scholarly inquiry, they can also be effective in assisting nursing faculty in developing their own scholarship and skill in the area of research.…”