Strategies and Intervening Factors Influencing Student Social Interaction and Experiential Learning in an Interdisciplinary Research Team

Abstract

Faculty have long incorporated students into interdisciplinary research projects to meet increasingly common demands for collaborative research by federal funding agencies. Despite the critical role of experiential learning in building student research skills and capacity, few have explored social interaction mechanisms used to facilitate student experiential learning in an interdisciplinary research team. Drawing upon the New Rural Economy project as a case study, interviews with 13 students from eight Canadian universities were conducted to explore these social interaction mechanisms. While findings revealed an array of social interaction mechanisms used to develop student learning networks, the quality of these mechanisms were mixed; thereby influencing the utilization of these networks for guidance and feedback. As faculty organize social interaction mechanisms, they should consider factors such as previous experience, student and faculty relationships, finances, language, gender, ethnicity, and other issues, that will have an impact on student engagement with experiential learning.

Integrating team science into interdisciplinary graduate education: an exploration of the SESYNC Graduate Pursuit

“…At a program-level these include the following: (a) developing a core curriculum or competencies, (b) clarifying expectations for both depth and breadth, (c) providing mentoring and mentor training, (d) ensuring (in)formal, theoretical, and experiential educational opportunities, and (e) clear communication of expectations (Meyer et al 2015). At the individual-level, activities that facilitate the development of IDR/TS capacity include (a) facilitating interactions with external graduate faculty and students, (b) joining projects that are related to ones' dissertation subject, (c) identifying the practical relevance of a project, and (d) establishing a sense of project ownership (Tress et al 2009;Graybill et al 2006;Ryser et al 2009 (Killion et al 2018). However, few initiatives have attempted to meet IDR and TS capacity-building needs via programs independent of a university setting.…”

A social recommendation system for academic collaboration in undergraduate research

“…Undergraduate research is a challenging topic both in academia and in practice. Current research mainly focuses on the benefits of undergraduate research in various disciplines and universities (Goodlad, 1998;Hathaway, Nagda, & Gregerman, 2002;John & Creighton, 2011;Russell et al, 2007), strategies to promote undergraduate research (Ryser et al, 2009;Snow et al, 2010), and factors that influence undergraduates' decision-making in choosing research projects (Economy et al, 2014;Economy, Martin, & Kennedy, 2013;Hancock & Russell, 2008). Among them, this paper focuses on the factors that influence undergraduates' decision-making in choosing research projects.…”

“…More features of research project should be considered. Incomplete information in decision‐making creates a mismatch problem between undergraduates and research projects, which leads to the difficulties for undergraduates to complete the research projects with achieved goals and successful results (Liu, Ma, Du, Yang, & Hua, ; Ryser, Halseth, & Thien, ; Wenderholm, ).…”

Reflections on interdisciplinary sustainability research with undergraduate students

“…However, when combined with interdisciplinary research, effective experiential learning for students needs to be carefully designed and managed. Ryser et al (2009) propose multiple factors for such interdisciplinary research that influence project outcomes and success including: previous experiences of students, student-faculty relationships, project finances, language, gender and student ethnicity. The effect of these proposed factors on interdisciplinary research outcomes are evaluated in the discussions section of the article.…”