Author(s):
Effect of Student Autonomy on Student Outcomes in a Multi-Institution CURE
Christopher W. Beck, Nicole M. Gerardo, Anupriya Karippadath, Sinead N. Younge, Lawrence S. Blumer
Category: Undergraduate Research, Experiential Learning, or Extracurricular Experience and Training
Need: Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have become a widespread approach to teaching in biology laboratory courses. Student perceptions of some research practices in CUREs, such discovery and relevance, have been shown to positively impact student outcomes. However, how CUREs are characterized based on these research practices is highly variable across CUREs. Furthermore, we know little about how CURE structure impacts student perceptions of research practices and subsequent student outcomes in these courses.
Guiding Question: Previously, we showed that student perceptions of research practices were unaffected by the degree to which students had autonomy to choose a research question in a CURE. In this study, we examined the effect of student autonomy on student outcomes in implementations of the Bean Beetle Microbiome CURE in 31 courses at 14 colleges and universities. Implementations were designed as either lower student autonomy (faculty specified the research question addressed) or higher student autonomy (students chose the research question). In addition, we explored the relationships among student perceptions of research practices and student outcomes.
Outcomes: The degree of student autonomy in determining the research question did not significantly influence student outcomes. We assessed student outcomes, including student self-efficacy, science identity, science community values, networking and project ownership (cognitive and emotional ownership). However, there were no significant affects of student autonomy to choose the research question on any student outcomes. All aspects of research practices, with the exception of collaboration, significantly influenced some aspect of short-term student outcomes. Subsequently, self-efficacy and emotional ownership were positively related to science identity. However, cognitive ownership was negatively related to science identity. Interestingly, science identity had significant reciprocal relationships with all short-term outcomes, which is evidence of potential feedback interactions between short-term outcomes and the medium-term science identity outcome. Yet, there was no significant relationship between science identity and student career expectations, perhaps due to the fact that the majority of students already plan to pursue post-graduate training or careers in STEM.
Broader Impacts: These findings indicate that the Bean Beetle Microbiome CURE, and by extension other CUREs, may be just as effective when the instructor specifies the research question as when our students choose the question to pursue. Consequently, the degree of student autonomy instructors give their students to choose a research question may be less important than providing opportunities for students to engage in full-semester authentic research. We conclude that the most important aspects of CUREs include providing students opportunities to make meaningful discoveries, design experiments, develop and test hypotheses, and conduct other aspects of authentic research in undergraduate laboratory courses. These research practices have positive effects on short-term and subsequent medium-term student outcomes.
Coauthors
Nicole M. Gerardo, Emory University, Atlanta, GA; Anupriya Karippadath, Emory University, Atlanta, GA; Sinead N. Younge, Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA; Lawrence S. Blumer, Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA
