2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The importance of undergraduate research can be emphasized from two perspectives: first, it enhances students' engagement in learning, and second, it increases the productivity of research labs by employing undergraduate students as professional scholars. Despite the benefits, many labs have difficulty implementing undergraduate research (UGR) programs. To address common challenges many institutions face with undergraduate research, we are developing a framework that emphasizes curiosity, connection, and value creation in research activities to foster an entrepreneurial mindset (EM) in undergraduate research. Using this framework, we aim to make research training more efficient, increase overall lab productivity, boost undergraduate research effectiveness, and motivate students.

Our project goals are to expose undergraduate students to research opportunities early, support students with resilience skills so they can persist and be successful in their work, and support faculty in developing and supporting meaningful research opportunities for undergraduate students. As part of this work, we also aim to better understand undergraduate students’ motivations for being involved in research. To foster EM and achieve these goals, we designed a series of videos and faculty-led EM training workshops for students. These activities are scalable and transferable for undergraduate researchers and their mentors at different institutions.

The intent of these workshops is to enable students to become involved in research, and once involved, allow them to directly apply EM concepts to their research projects. Workshop topics include framing research questions with EM, building resilience in research, thriving in a research environment, developing an elevator pitch, using EM to drive effective data presentation, and focusing next steps in research to maximize research impact. Each workshop includes video content, a workbook, and a moderator guide, with workshops designed to be deployed either in‐person or virtually facilitated by a workshop moderator.

In designing our interventions, we considered alignment with guidelines provided by the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR), which include curating engaging and high‐impact opportunities, creating a community of student scholars, peer mentoring, opportunities for early and sustained involvement, and program assessment (CUR Report 2012).

To assess the impact of our workshop-based interventions on student research productivity and attitudes about research, we developed a retrospective, post-experience survey and a one-year follow-up survey for students participating in the workshops. We initially distributed our post-experience survey to a baseline cohort of students who participated in UGR but did not complete the EM-focused workshops. To improve workshop content and better understand student motivations, we will collect the corresponding data from workshop participants in the future.
This paper describes our project goals, our planned workshop content, and baseline survey results on undergraduate student attitudes and motivations related to participating in research. Eventually, by piloting workshops and collecting data collaboratively across five institutions that vary in size and culture, this project will deliver a flexible set of training modules and a menu of intervention options that other institutions may choose to modify and implement to improve undergraduate research experiences and outcomes.

Reference:
Council on Undergraduate Research, 2012, “Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research (COEUR)”.