Florida Statewide Symposium: Best Practices in Undergraduate Research

Conducting community-based research while participating in international service learning seems like the perfect match. Executing research in a responsible and critical manner, however, can prove to be challenging. In this interactive presentation, we will demonstrate how FSU is tackling this challenge through its Global Scholars program. We will outline effective strategies used over the past 5 years, as well as new ones we are just beginning to implement. These new strategies hope to continue the process of reflecting, acting, and dialoguing, i.e. praxis, that students engaged in while overseas and apply it to conducting community-based research upon returning home.

Florida Gulf Coast University’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) focuses on improving student critical thinking, information literacy, and written communication. Rather than developing these skills through traditional methods (e.g., through senior-level, independent research), these learning outcomes are practiced through scholarly experiences. Traditional undergraduate scholarship manifests itself through terminal, senior capstone or research experiences. These, because of the economy of scale, typically reach a minority of students, often just honors students or those approached by faculty mentors. At FGCU, however, scholarly experiences are a part of the curriculum throughout the program of study, and scaffolded to build greater depth and sophistication. Presented here are examples from both a program in STEM (Marine Science) and the humanities (Music Performance).

Students in Marine Science receive their first exposure to the vetting of literature and expository scientific writing within their general education science courses. Students are presented with an exercise to evaluate the credibility of web-based literature using the CRAAP test. A semester-long writing assignment has them investigate an earth-process-related problem that has societal consequences. They review and evaluate the secondary literature, prepare a first draft that is critiqued, and then submit a final version while meeting a number of milestones along the way. Students enter the major’s curriculum through a course entitled “Scientific Process”, which introduces them to all aspects of scientific research and culminates with them writing and defending a research proposal they may eventually work to completion. Numerous courses at the upper-class level are designed as scholarly focused or enriched, a branding requiring that certain criteria are met. In these courses, students often participate in genuine collaborative research projects that can lead to student publication and enhance faculty productivity. Finally, as a senior, the capstone course requires that they produce a scholarly poster or oral presentation that is either given in the class or within a university forum.

Music Performance students’ experiences track towards demonstration of content mastery in the artifact of a senior recital. In this public display of scholarly achievement a student presents repertoire from major historical eras on his or her instrument or voice for an hour or more. Additionally the students complete a comprehensive document analyzing music in terms of performance practice (how and why certain music should be performed to meet historically appropriate creations and recreations). Students enter this major their freshman year after an audition process and immediately begin developing the skills required to demonstrate proficiency as professional musicians. Experiences performing in ensembles and in private lessons cultivate listening skills to make informed musical judgments. Theory courses develop students’ abilities to hear music with their eyes. Upper level courses require students to clearly articulate in writing their thoughts about music’s formal properties, why certain music requires particular performance considerations, and how to execute those performance requirements in their technique. The conundrum for collection of data is how to assess university-wide learning outcomes in the context of a performance. Without a tangible artifact, FGCU relies on artist teams to develop assessment procedures that accurately capture if students meet targets as demonstrated in performance.

Though too early for us to have extensive assessment data, anecdotal evidence suggests students enjoy this approach and are honing their skills within these learning outcomes. We anticipate these improvements will increase graduates’ life-long learning potential, as well as their competitiveness for employment and further education.

The purpose of this presentation is to highlight avenues toward undergraduate scholarship in education and business. The common theme of these initiatives is the transformative learning which students experienced in local and global communities. In education, the examples include a course-embedded action research with community service, and autoethnography in which students analyzed their experiences abroad to uncover the process of transformation. In business, students worked on a semester long project in quality management collaborating with a local health equipment manufacturer. The systematic guidance of the business and continuous feedback of the instruction, resulted in full transformation of student learning.

The Office of Undergraduate Research has three separate opportunities for current undergraduate researchers to assume a leadership role and assist their peers in getting started in research. This presentation will lay out three models for student leadership in undergraduate research: peer mentors/student teaching assistants in a three-day introduction to research course, student assistants who host peer mentor advising hours throughout the academic year, and a Student Council who focus on outreach across campus and advisory capacity. This session will provide an overview of these programs, and students will share their experiences as mentors in the programs.

The Honors College (HC) was asked by the FIU Provost to take the lead in creating an innovative culture for undergraduate research at FIU. Our presentation is about how two of the elements of HC’s successful research program have been expanded university-wide: our Conference for Undergraduate Research (CURFIU) and our research opportunity database, the FIU Undergraduate Research Portal. The creation of this database provides an interactive site with information about research opportunities, conferences, scholarships, and a subscription system for students. We also discuss the challenges we face as we try to promote undergraduate research in an environment of limited resources.

Determining how many students are involved in undergraduate research is challenging. Universities have used a variety of metrics to quantify participation including surveys, course enrollment data or program counts, self-reporting of students and/faculty, and campus-wide databases. This panel will discuss each type of “counting” system and evaluate the merits and potential costs of each.