Rethinking undergraduate research training: a model for engaging students in collaborative science
There are numerous benefits to engaging undergraduate students in research experiences, including better academic performance and increased job opportunities.
However, many student research projects are not designed to teach undergraduates the skills needed to work in collaborative settings. As these types of team projects are becoming more common for researchers in many disciplines, we propose a model for explicitly teaching collaborative skills while engaging students in meaningful scientific research.
Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.
We conducted a collaborative science project that engaged faculty advisors and upper year undergraduates at four institutions across North America. The network of advisors and students investigated the impacts of climate change on nutrient cycling in ponds and streams.
Students collaboratively developed and implemented a common experimental protocol where they assessed the potential release of nutrients from cattails as a result of freezing and thawing. Through regular video teleconferences, the students and faculty advisors were able to share data, write collaboratively, and build collaborative and communication skills that go above and beyond the benefits of a typical undergraduate project.
Students indicated that by being part of a larger project they were invited to think about the broader geographic significance of the study beyond the local systems they studied and to consider the complexities inherent to conducting research spanning multiple regions, collaborators, and institutions. Additionally, the students found value in having had the opportunity to connect to multiple faculty mentors, each with different skills, areas of expertise, and perspectives on research.
Faculty advisors felt that their students benefited from more continuous support from the network and demonstrated more progress than students not participating in the network. Because of the capacity to collect and synthesize data from different regions, the impact of the project exceeded what would typically be possible with a single student and allowed all students involved to contribute to authorship of a collaborative, peer-reviewed publication.
This model for training undergraduate students in collaborative science is well suited to our particular field of environmental science, but it could be readily adapted to other disciplines where team research is becoming the norm. Explicitly training undergraduate students to work in highly collaborative and networked environments will benefit them as they progress in their future careers, whether in academic institutions, governmental organizations, or private industry.
Read the full paper — A model for training undergraduate students in collaborative science by Nora J. Casson, Colin J. Whitfield, Helen M. Baulch, Sheryl Mills, Rebecca L. North and Jason J. Venkiteswaran.
