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1. A computational materials science paradigm for a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE)

   https://doi.org/10.1557/s43580-024-00934-w  

   Strubbe, David_A (August 2024, MRS Advances)

   AbstractCourse-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) bring the excitement of research into the classroom to improve learning and the sense of belonging in the field. They can reach more students, earlier in their studies, than typical undergraduate research. Key aspects are: students learn and use research methods, give input into the project, generate new research data, and analyze it to draw conclusions that are not known beforehand. CUREs are common in other fields but have been rare in materials science and engineering. I propose a paradigm for computational material science CUREs, enabled by web-based simulation tools from nanoHUB.org that require minimal computational skills. After preparatory exercises, students each calculate part of a set of closely related materials, following a defined protocol to contribute to a novel class dataset which they analyze, and also calculate an additional property of their choice. This approach has been used successfully in several class projects. Graphical abstract 

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2. Classroom undergraduate research experiences are a “CURE” that increases engagement by students and teachers

   https://doi.org/10.1093/femsle/fnab036  

   Scott, Kathleen M (March 2021, FEMS Microbiology Letters)

   null (Ed.)

   ABSTRACT It is widely acknowledged that having experience conducting research is invaluable for undergraduate science students. Most undergraduate research is undertaken by students in a mentor's laboratory, but this limits the number of opportunities for students, as each laboratory can only take on a certain number of undergraduate researchers each semester. Additionally, it is also widely acknowledged that it is difficult for teachers to meet research goals while providing the best possible coursework for undergraduate students. Both of these bottlenecks can be circumvented via Classroom Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs), which integrate research into the curricula of structured undergraduate classes. Students enrolled in classes that include CUREs conduct research to address open-ended questions as part of their coursework. In this commentary, I describe the many ways in which CUREs are helpful for students and teachers, as well as considerations for designing successful CUREs. I provide several examples of CUREs from Microbial Physiology laboratory classes and Genomics classes that I have taught. Results from these CUREs have been successfully integrated into many peer-reviewed publications in which the students are co-authors, which has been a boon both to students’ post-baccalaureate opportunities, as well as my research agenda. 

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3. Authentic Scientific Research through an Undergraduate Ecology Course

   https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2023.85.6.336  

   Burgin, Stephen R.; Siepielski, Adam M. (August 2023, The American Biology Teacher)

   Undergraduate science students who volunteer within a research laboratory group, or participate in funded research opportunities, in general are those who have the opportunity to engage in authentic research. In this article, we report the findings from two different iterations of a semester-long collaboration between a biology faculty member and a science education faculty member at a major research institution in the Southeastern United States. Specifically, the faculty members designed an ecology laboratory course for upper-level undergraduate students (primarily biology majors) where they would engage in an original and highly authentic ecological research project. The goal of this course was to have students explicitly learn about the nature of science (NOS), and authentic scientific practices such as inquiry and experimentation in the context of their own research. In the second year of the course, the global COVID-19 pandemic forced us to modify our approach to accomplish the same goals, but now in a remote and online format. Using questionnaires, concept inventories, and semi-structured interviews, the impact of the course on students’ understandings of NOS, inquiry, and experimentation, in addition to their perspectives on the experience within the course compared to prior laboratory coursework, was investigated. We found that students showed modest gains in each of the aforementioned desirable outcomes. These gains were generally comparable in both face-to-face and remote course settings. Additionally, students shared with us their preference for authentic laboratory work as compared with the typical laboratory work with its given research question and step-by-step instructions. Our research demonstrates what is possible in both face-to-face and remote undergraduate laboratory courses in biology and the positive impact that was observed in our students. We hope it serves as a model for other scientists and science educators as they collaborate to design authentic research-based coursework for undergraduate biology students. 

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4. Coding Code: Qualitative Methods for Investigating Data Science Skills

   https://doi.org/10.1080/26939169.2023.2277847  

   Theobold, Allison S; Wickstrom, Megan H; Hancock, Stacey A (May 2024, Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education)

   Despite the elevated importance of Data Science in Statistics, there exists limited research investigating how students learn the computing concepts and skills necessary for carrying out data science tasks. Computer Science educators have investigated how students debug their own code and how students reason through foreign code. While these studies illuminate different aspects of students’ programming behavior or conceptual understanding, a method has yet to be employed that can shed light on students’ learning processes. This type of inquiry necessitates qualitative methods, which allow for a holistic description of the skills a student uses throughout the computing code they produce, the organization of these descriptions into themes, and a comparison of the emergent themes across students or across time. In this article we share how to conceptualize and carry out the qualitative coding process with students’ computing code. Drawing on the Block Model to frame our analysis, we explore two types of research questions which could be posed about students’ learning. Supplementary materials for this article are available online. 

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5. A Model for Course-Based Undergraduate Research in First-Year Engineering

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--46456  

   Davishahl, Eric (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   The Association of American Colleges and Universities identifies undergraduate research experiences as a high impact practice for increasing student success and retention in STEM majors. Most undergraduate research opportunities for community college engineering students involve partnerships with universities and typically take the form of paid summer experiences. Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) offer an alternative model with potential for significant expansion of research opportunities for students. This approach weaves research into the courses students are already required to complete for their degrees. CUREs are an equitable approach for introducing students to research because they do not demand extracurricular financial and/or time commitments beyond what students must already commit to for their courses. This paper describes an adaptable model for implementing a CURE in an introductory engineering design and computing course that features applications of low-cost microcontrollers. Students work toward course learning outcomes focused on computer programming, engineering design processes, and effective teamwork in the context of multi-term research and development efforts to design, build, and test devices for other CUREs in science lab courses as well as for other applications at the college or with community partners. Students choose from a menu of projects each term, with a typical course offering involving four to six different projects running simultaneously. Each team identifies a focused design and development scope of work within the larger context of the project they are interested in. They give weekly progress reports and gather input from their customers. The work culminates in a prototype and final report to document their work for student teams who will carry it forward in future terms. We assessed the impact of the experience on students’ beliefs about science and engineering, STEM confidence, and career aspirations using a nationally normed survey for CUREs in STEM and report results from five terms of offering this course. We find statistically significant pre-post gains on two-thirds of the survey items relating to students’ understanding of the research process and confidence in their STEM abilities. The pre-post gains are generally comparable to those reported by others who used the same survey to assess the impact of a summer research experience for community college students. These findings indicate that the benefits of student participation in this CURE model are comparable to the benefits students see by participation in summer research programs. 

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