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Recent work has shown that student trust in their instructor is a key moderator of STEM student buy-in to evidence-based teaching practices (EBTs), enhancing positive student outcomes such as performance, engagement, and persistence. Although trust in instructor has been previously operationalized in related settings, a systematic classification of how undergraduate STEM students perceive trustworthiness in their instructors remains to be developed. Moreover, previous operationalizations impose a structure that often includes distinct domains, such as cognitive and affective trust, that have yet to be empirically tested in the undergraduate STEM context. MethodsTo address this gap, we engage in a multi-step qualitative approach to unify existing definitions of trust from the literature and analyze structured interviews with 57 students enrolled in undergraduate STEM classes who were asked to describe a trusted instructor. Through thematic analysis, we propose that characteristics of a trustworthy instructor can be classified into three domains. We then assess the validity of the three-domain model both qualitatively and quantitatively. First, we examine student responses to determine how traits from different domains are mentioned together. Second, we use a process-model approach to instrument design that leverages our qualitative interview codebook to develop a survey that measures student trust. We performed an exploratory factor analysis on survey responses to quantitatively test the construct validity of our proposed three-domain trust model. Results and discussionWe identified 28 instructor traits that students perceived as trustworthy, categorized into cognitive, affective, and relational domains. Within student responses, we found that there was a high degree of interconnectedness between traits in the cognitive and relational domains. When we assessed the construct validity of the three-factor model using survey responses, we found that a three-factor model did not adequately capture the underlying latent structure. Our findings align with recent calls to both closely examine long-held assumptions of trust dimensionality and to develop context-specific trust measurements. The work presented here can inform the development of a reliable measure of student trust within undergraduate STEM student environments and ultimately improve our understanding of how instructors can best leverage the effectiveness of EBTs for positive student learning outcomes. 

ABSTRACT Undergraduate research plays an important role in the development of science students. The two most common forms of undergraduate research are those in traditional settings (such as internships and research-for-credit in academic research labs) and course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs). Both of these settings offer many benefits to students, yet they have unique strengths and weaknesses that lead to trade-offs. Traditional undergraduate research experiences (UREs) offer the benefits of personalized mentorship and experience in a professional setting, which help build students’ professional communication skills, interest, and scientific identity. However, UREs can reach only a limited number of students. On the other end of the trade-off, CUREs offer research authenticity in a many-to-one classroom research environment that reaches more students. CUREs provide real research experience in a collaborative context, but CUREs are not yet necessarily equipping students with all of the experiences needed to transition into a research lab environment outside the classroom. We propose that CURE instructors can bridge trade-offs between UREs and CUREs by deliberately including learning goals and activities in CUREs that recreate the benefits of UREs, specifically in the areas of professional communication, scientific identify, and student interest. To help instructors implement this approach, we provide experience- and evidence-based guidance for student-centered, collaborative learning opportunities. 

In response to the outbreak of COVID-19 the national landscape of higher education changed quickly and dramatically to move “online” in the Spring semester of 2020. While distressing to both faculty and students, it presents a unique opportunity to explore how students responded to this unexpected and challenging learning situation. In four undergraduate STEM courses that incorporated course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs)—which are often focused on discovery learning and laboratory research—we had an existing study in progress to track students' interest development at five time points over the Spring 2020 semester. Via this ongoing study we were able to investigate how students stay engaged in their college science courses when facing unexpected challenges and obstacles to their learning. Longitudinal survey data from 41 students in these CURE courses demonstrated that students' situational interest dropped significantly when their CURE courses unexpectedly shifted from hands-on, discovery-based, and laboratory-based instruction to online instruction. Although we observed a dramatic decline in student interest in general after the CURE courses moved fully online, the decline rates varied across students. Students who were able to make meaningful connections between the learning activities and their personal or career goals were more likely to maintain a higher level of interest in the course. Implications for practice are discussed.