Sandra L. Laursen

Assessment of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences: A Meeting Report

This report presents a summary of a meeting on assessment of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), including an operational definition of a CURE, a summary of research on CUREs, relevant findings from studies of undergraduate research internships, and recommendations for future research on and evaluation of CUREs.

What Experiences Help Students Become Scientists?: A Comparative Study of Research and Other Sources of Personal and Professional Gains for STEM Undergraduates

In this study of curricular and co-curricular learning in STEM disciplines at four liberal arts colleges, comparative analysis of 62 interviews with graduating seniors demonstrates that out-of-class experiences fostered many intellectual, personal, and professional gains. Undergraduate research, in particular, helped to shape science identities and socialize students into the scientific profession. The findings suggest that participation in authentic, independent work with adequate guidance is critical to student learning and development in experiential contexts.

Demographic Inertia Revisited: An Immodest Proposal to Achieve Equitable Gender Representation among Faculty in Higher Education

To address the problem of an unequal sex ratio among faculty at a male-dominated Research Extensive university, we estimate time to reach equality in the faculty gender composition. Five scenarios model demographic factors and policy intervention by using an innovative application of a differential equations model.

The Benefits of Multi-Year Research Experiences: Differences in Novice and Experienced Students’ Reported Gains from Undergraduate Research

This mixed-methods study explores differences in novice and experienced undergraduate students’ perceptions of their cognitive, personal, and professional gains from engaging in scientific research. The study was conducted in four different undergraduate research (UR) programs at two research-extensive universities; three of these programs had a focus on the biosciences. Seventy-three entry-level and experienced student researchers participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews and completed the quantitative Undergraduate Research Student Self-Assessment (URSSA) instrument. Interviews and surveys assessed students’ developmental outcomes from engaging in UR. Experienced students reported distinct personal, professional, and cognitive outcomes relative to their novice peers, including a more sophisticated understanding of the process of scientific research. Students also described the trajectories by which they developed not only the intellectual skills necessary to advance in science, but also the behaviors and temperament necessary to be a scientist. The findings suggest that students benefit from multi-year UR experiences. Implications for UR program design, advising practices, and funding structures are discussed.

The Undergraduate Research Student Self-Assessment (URSSA): Validation for Use in Program Evaluation

To assess the validity of the Undergraduate Research Student Self-Assessment, or URSSA, a survey used to evaluate undergraduate research programs, researchers examined factor structure, score correlation, and reliability. Survey item blocks represented separate but related constructs; average scores from indicators were moderately to highly correlated and highly reliable.

Learning, Teaching and Scholarship: Fundamental Tensions of Undergraduate Research

Sandra Laursen and Anne-Barrie Hunter are the co-directors of Ethnography & Evaluation Research (E&ER) in the Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder; Laursen is a research associate and Hunter a senior professional research assistant there. E&ER conducts research and evaluation studies on education and career paths in science, engineering, and mathematics. Elaine Seymour is the director emerita of E&ER.

Transformative Learning Personal Empowerment in Learning Mathematics

This article introduces the concept of personal empowerment as a form of transformative learning. It focuses on commonly ignored but enhancing elements of mathematics learning and argues that crucial personal resources can be essentially promoted by high engagement in mathematical problem solving, inquiry, and collaboration. This personal empowerment is considered in three forms: self-empowerment, cognitive empowerment, and social empowerment. We report results from semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students who participated in college mathematics classes that implemented inquiry-based learning at four research universities. The findings support the idea that learning mathematics in classroom situations that use student activity, deep engagement, and collaboration can be strongly transformative for individual students. Not only do these courses enhance students’ thinking and problem-solving skills but they also significantly promote self-perceptions, agency and self-regulatory activity, and social skills. Positive elements of these classroom practices for students’ personal empowerment and transformative learning are discussed.

How do I get From Here to There? An Examination of Ph.D. Science Students' Career Preparation and Decision Making

Drawing on developmental networks theory, this qualitative research study explores the professional preparation and career decision-making processes of doctoral students in the sciences. The study is based on 95 semi-structured interviews with informants at three research universities in the United States. Though many students were interested in non-academic career tracks, they were largely unaware of the breadth of their choices or how to best prepare for these careers. Unable to cultivate networks in non-academic careers, many students turned to peers to fill the career development gap. Due to their lack of knowledge about career options, among other factors, students often delayed selecting and preparing for careers until the end of their graduate studies. Implications for doctoral education practice are discussed.

Helping Scientists Become Effective Partners in Education and Outreach

How does a scientist find herself standing before a group of lively third-graders? She may be personally motivated—seeking to improve public understanding of scientific issues and the nature of science, or to see her own children receive a good science education—or perhaps she simply enjoys this kind of work [Andrews et al., 20057semi; Kim and Fortner, 2008]. In addition to internal motivating factors, federal funding agencies have begun to encourage scientists to participate in education and outreach (E/O) related to their research, through NASA program requirements for such activities (see “Implementing the Office of Space Science Education/Public Outreach Strategy,” at http://spacescience.nasa.gov/admin/pubs/edu/imp_plan .htm) and the U.S. National Science Foundations increased emphasis on “broader impacts” in merit review of research proposals (see http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2003/nsf032/bicexamples.pdf).

Supporting instructional change in mathematics: using social network analysis to understand online support processes following professional development workshops

BackgroundStudies continually show benefits of active learning in college classrooms, yet it is difficult to get faculty to adopt these methods. Particularly challenging is the final step of the instructional change process, “refreezing,” when after making initial changes in instructional methods, instructors decide whether to continue with new instructional methods or return to their previous methods. Though this stage is important, it is not well studied. Most available studies about ongoing support following professional development on teaching merely state that facilitators made an effort to offer support, or report how frequently participants engaged with online support mechanisms through counting postings on listservs or message boards. Such measures do not show evidence that participants actually received positive reinforcement or intellectual and emotional support, which are crucial to refreezing, nor do these frequency analyses help other professional developers learn how to create productive ongoing support mechanisms that yield high participant engagement.ResultsThis workshop for 35 college mathematics instructors used online and in-person communities to provide support to participants during the post-workshop period of “refreezing.” Almost all workshop attendees participated in “e-mentoring” (94%), primarily through a productive, engaging group email listserv. By combining qualitative coding of message content with the techniques of social network analysis, we reveal how facilitators and participants on the group listserv provided intellectual and emotional support, as well as positive reinforcement through feedback loops. The analysis also shows how the facilitators made this a helpful group and maintained participant engagement through frequent encouragement, deliberate community building, and thoughtfully timed responses.ConclusionsThough many professional development workshops offer online support through email listservs, there is little evidence that these listservs successfully engage and support participants. Applying the analytic approach of social network analysis allowed us to model the conversation threads in one highly engaged and supportive listserv following a mathematics professional development workshop. This method revealed the processes of ongoing support in ways that traditional frequency-based analyses cannot. This method also revealed lessons for how other professional developers can create productive, helpful online support listservs. Since this is an innovative application of social network analysis, we describe the method in detail.