Author(s):
Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) engage a larger and more diverse group of students in research and promote student benefits, such as retention in college and in science. However, less is known about what makes CUREs effective for students. We investigated whether “instructor talk” could be a mechanism through which CUREs improve student outcomes compared to non-CURE courses. We characterized the questions instructors asked, mentoring support instructors provided, and other forms of non-content talk in a national sample of 48 biology lab courses with 476 students, with varying weeks spent doing research. We found that certain talk was more prevalent in CUREs, such as instructors describing the nature of science. Other forms of talk were not distinctive, such as instructors providing encouragement to students. Furthermore, we tested whether types of talk were associated with indicators of integration into the scientific community (e.g., scientific self-efficacy, scientific identity), and with student perceptions of the values and costs of doing research. We found a small, positive association between research weeks and students’ post-course scientific self-efficacy, controlling for their pre-course values, but no association between talk and any indicators of scientific integration. Career support talk was positively associated with perceptions of the costs of doing research. Talk about the purpose of the lab work was associated with reduced cost perceptions. Our study is among the first to associate instructor talk with student outcomes. Our results indicate that certain types of talk may contribute to some but not all of the benefits of CUREs.
