2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work-in-progress paper describes the pedagogical redesign of a summer research experience for undergraduates (REU). The summer REU that we have examined has functioned as a research apprenticeship program for over 20 years delivering numerous professional development opportunities to undergraduate researchers. We have applied backward-course design principles to enhance the structure of the program. Backwards design is a way of designing curriculum by starting with the end goal in mind. This means identifying desired results (learning objectives) followed by acceptable evidence of learning (assessment) before developing instructional activities (instruction). Although backward-course design has been applied to course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), to our knowledge, this is one of the first applications of these principles to a traditional apprenticeship model.

Learning Objectives: We crafted learning objectives from the summer REU goals; 1) Practice Research Skills and Conduct, 2) Preparation for Graduate School, and 3) Develop Technical Communication Skills and Connections for Career Advancement. The previous learning objectives were written like guiding concepts for the program goals i.e. not action-oriented or measurable. This redesign focuses on creating action-oriented, measurable learning objectives that align with students’ research activities. We used Anderson and Krathwohl’s revised Bloom’s taxonomy to develop action-oriented and measurable learning objectives based on the enduring outcomes derived from the program goals. We identified eight total learning objectives to guide both our assessment strategy and a series of half-day workshops sessions that we call a mini-conference.

Assessment: To measure progress towards the learning objectives, we implemented a series of deliverables: mini-conference reflections, an annotated literature review, a draft abstract, a draft technical paper, a final abstract, a presentation draft, a final presentation, and a final technical paper. These assessments are designed to align with the natural progression of the research apprenticeship, ensuring that each deliverable integrates smoothly with the students’ ongoing research activities. We revised our assessment strategy by augmenting rubrics to focus on evidence of learning as defined in Hansen’s Idea-Based Learning.

Instruction: In addition to the research apprenticeship in a laboratory, students will participate in four mini-conferences, complete the deliverables, and hold regular meetings with their out-of-lab graduate mentors which our REU provides. The deliverables act as a scaffold for the research apprenticeship, which we can use to measure student progress towards the program learning outcomes. The regular meetings with out-of-lab graduate mentors are to provide support for the students as they progress through the research apprenticeship and deliverables. The four mini-conferences would act as sessions of flipped classroom experiences for the students to learn about research conduct, graduate school, research careers, and improving technical communication skills. With this redesign, we focus on incorporating more active learning such as post-conference reflections and minute papers.

By incorporating evidence-based pedagogy, refining assessments, and refining instruction, the program has improved the alignment of its design. This pedagogical shift marks a significant step forward in enhancing the educational impact of this summer REU. The techniques that we applied to better align our summer REU can be readily translated to other traditional research apprenticeship models.