2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

For undergraduate students, research is a highly transformative and in demand experience. It is also an especially important experiential marker for graduate school admissions in addition to being a valuable alternative work experience for those pursuing industry positions. Research is therefore popular with a wide variety of students. At institutions where graduate students advise mentees one-on-one, however, the number of mentors and their bandwidths directly limit the opportunities for students to participate. To expand the availability of mentors, and open opportunities for undergraduate student research, we wanted to assess whether organizing undergraduate students into teams of 3-5 per research project with a high student to mentor ratio is an effective strategy. While the benefits of team-based instruction are not unknown to pedagogy, no study on its measurable effects with respect to undergraduate research has taken place. To address this, we surveyed students as well as mentors who have participated in similarly organized research to study the ‘cost-benefit’ of this team-based mentorship strategy. Overall, creating team-based undergraduate research experiences lowers the per-student workload that mentors undergo while maintaining or improving the quality of the experience. This organizational strategy is worthwhile to adopt for programs and institutions of any size as teamwork between students is beneficial for meeting a wide range of educational objectives beyond increased access.