Kirsten Zimbardi

Embedding undergraduate research experiences within the curriculum: a cross-disciplinary study of the key characteristics guiding implementation

Undergraduate research experiences provide students with opportunities to engage in high-impact experiential learning. Although prevalent in the sciences, there are now extensive banks of case studies demonstrating the use of undergraduate research as an educationally enriching activity across many disciplines. This study investigated the diversity of undergraduate research opportunities available across a wide range of disciplines at a large, research-intensive, Australian university. Through extensive interviews, 68 undergraduate research programmes across 26 discipline-based schools were characterised. A typology of undergraduate research models is proposed, revealing key characteristics underlying the ways in which research experiences are embedded in undergraduate curricula across a diverse range of disciplinary contexts. This provides guidance to academics, administrators and policymakers seeking to improve student access to undergraduate research experiences.

A Set of Vertically Integrated Inquiry-Based Practical Curricula that Develop Scientific Thinking Skills for Large Cohorts of Undergraduate Students.

Science graduates require critical thinking skills to deal with the complex problems they will face in their 21st century workplaces. Inquiry-based curricula can provide students with the opportunities to develop such critical thinking skills; however, evidence suggests that an inappropriate level of autonomy provided to underprepared students may not only be daunting to students but also detrimental to their learning. After a major review of the Bachelor of Science, we developed, implemented, and evaluated a series of three vertically integrated courses with inquiry-style laboratory practicals for early-stage undergraduate students in biomedical science. These practical curricula were designed so that students would work with increasing autonomy and ownership of their research projects to develop increasingly advanced scientific thinking and communication skills. Students undertaking the first iteration of these three vertically integrated courses reported learning gains in course content as well as skills in scientific writing, hypothesis construction, experimental design, data analysis, and interpreting results. Students also demonstrated increasing skills in both hypothesis formulation and communication of findings as a result of participating in the inquiry-based curricula and completing the associated practical assessment tasks. Here, we report the specific aspects of the curricula that students reported as having the greatest impact on their learning and the particular elements of hypothesis formulation and communication of findings that were more challenging for students to master. These findings provide important implications for science educators concerned with designing curricula to promote scientific thinking and communication skills alongside content acquisition.

An inquiry-based practical for a large, foundation-level undergraduate laboratory that enhances student understanding of basic cellular concepts and scientific experimental design

Student‐centered education involving research experiences or inquiry have been shown to help undergraduate students understand, and become excited about, the process of scientific investigation. These benefits are particularly important for students in the early stages of their degree (Report and Kenny, http://naplesccsunysbedu/Pres/boyernsf/1998). However, embedding such experiences into the curriculum is particularly difficult when dealing with early stage students, who are in larger cohorts and often lack the background content knowledge necessary to engage with primary research literature and research level methods and equipment. We report here the design, delivery, assessment, and subsequent student learning outcomes of a 4‐week practical module for 120 students at the beginning of their second year of university, which successfully engages students in designing cell culture experiments and in understanding the molecular processes and machinery involved in the basic cellular process of macropinocytosis.

Changes in Biology Self-Efficacy during a First-Year University Course.

Biology self-efficacy was measured in first-year students. Self-efficacy was lower in females than in males, most noticeably in high-achieving students. High school experience contributed to self-efficacy at the beginning of the semester, and this was replaced by progressive grades at the end of the semester. Self-efficacy did not correlate with exam grades.

Are they using my feedback? The extent of students’ feedback use has a large impact on subsequent academic performance

Feedback is known to have a large influence on student learning gains, and the emergence of online tools has greatly enhanced the opportunity for delivering timely, expressive, digital feedback and for investigating its learning impacts. However, to date there have been no large quantitative investigations of the feedback provided by large teams of markers, feedback use by large cohorts of students, nor its impact on students’ academic performance across successive assessment tasks. We have developed an innovative online system to collect large-scale data on digital feedback provision and use. Our markers (n = 38) used both audio and typed feedback modalities extensively, providing 388 ± 4 and 1126 ± 37 words per report for first- and second-year students, respectively. Furthermore, 92% of first year and 85% of second-year students accessed their feedback, with 58% accessing their feedback for over an hour. Lastly, the amount of time students spent interacting with feedback is significantly related to the rate of improvement in subsequent assessment tasks. This study challenges assertions that many students do not collect, or use, their feedback. More importantly, we offer novel insights into the relationships between feedback provision, feedback use and successful academic outcomes.

Learning hindrances and self-regulated learning strategies reported by undergraduate students: identifying characteristics of resilient students

ABSTRACT Students in higher education face a variety of learning hindrances while studying at university. These hindrances may negatively impact on learning by distracting from study, or may enhance learning by encouraging students to address challenges as they arise. In the current study students were asked to describe their learning hindrances at a single point early in semester, and to outline the strategies for overcoming these hindrances in future. Five hindrance clusters were determined and differences between student academic subgroups were identified. Hindrances associated with difficulties understanding were reported most frequently by improving students, who had demonstrated resilience by passing second year biomedical science courses after failing in first year. Improving students were also most likely to report learning strategies that promote understanding. These results suggest that early interventions to encourage students to critically evaluate their understanding may benefit struggling students.

Prompting undergraduate students’ metacognition of learning: implementing ‘meta-learning’ assessment tasks in the biomedical sciences

Abstract To succeed at post-secondary education, it’s essential that students develop an understanding of their own knowledge and learning processes. This metacognition of learning, or ‘meta-learning’, helps students to become more effective learners, as they become more aware of their self-regulatory processes and recognise the effectiveness of their study strategies. To increase biomedical science students’ self-awareness, we have designed and implemented meta-learning assessment tasks across our biomedical science courses. Most students reported that meta-learning tasks had a positive impact on their learning, as they prompted self-regulatory processes of forethought and self-reflection. We found that students were equally likely to change or not change their study strategies across subsequent semesters. Those students that did not change were generally high achievers, believing their study approaches were most effective, but their performance did not improve across semesters. In contrast, students who adapted, mostly by modifying how they appraised and rearranged records or improved planning and time management, performed less well overall but significantly improved their performance across semesters. Meta-learning tasks may prompt students to become more self-reflective and independent learners by affecting their approach to learning, enabling them to reflect on their study strategies, adapt and improve performance, and may enable the development of lifelong learning skills.

Designer-client communication in web design: a case study on the use of communication in practice

This paper reflects on a participant observational study that was conducted during a long-term iterative design project in which there was a high level of digital communication between the designers and clients. We describe a number of communication technologies that were employed to support the designer-client communication, and examine how successful they were in supporting this work. In our reflection we find that although the nature of digital communication between participants appears straightforward, there are a number of complexities in the roles and messiness that occurs throughout the design process. We examine how these channels were used in tandem to effectively communicate between the stakeholders, and explore why some technologies (primarily email) were more successful than others. Finally, we describe a number of patterns that emerged within the overall narrative, and reflect on ways in which these tools could be considered and designed in the future to better support this kind of project work.