Tonight I watched the JMBE live recording for the session entitled “Students Who Analyze Their Own Data in a Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) Show Gains in Scientific Identity and Emotional Ownership of Research” with Katelyn Cooper (Arizona State University) and Maya Munstermann (research technician at the University of Hawaii). Dr. Matt Knope and Maya Munstermann developed a CURE and reached out to Sara Brownell and Katelyn Cooper for this educational research project. Cooper defined CURE and asked: what makes a CURE distinct from other types of lab courses? Cooper explained that “students produce novel findings that matter to others outside of the course,” and CUREs are impactful, achieving many of the benefits from research experience in labs. Cooper listed benefits of CUREs and cited several important studies worth noting below:
- Gains in content knowledge (Shaffer et al. 2010)
- Improving critical thinking (Jordan et al. 2014, Brownell et al. 2015)
- Enhancing students’ science identities (Bhatt & Challa, 2017)
- Bolstering students’ abilities to navigate scientific obstacles (Gin et al. 2018)
- Increased persistence in undergraduate science (Rodenbusch et al. 2016)
However, Cooper noted that research is lacking on what about CURes leads to student gains. They cited the hallmarks of a CURE noted by Auchincloss et al. 2014:
- Collaboration
- Iteration
- Discovery
Cooper and others have learned that cognitive ownership, “the degree to which students feel as though they have intellectual responsibility over their work,” and emotional ownership, “the strength of students emotions toward their work” (Hanauer & Dolan 2014) are important for students’ intent to pursue a career in research. Several instructional and course design choices impact what students get out of a CURE, emphasized Cooper. Thus, they focused on the impact of students analyzing data they have collected and comparing to students analyzing data collected by others. I thought it was interesting that Cooper, Brownell, Schaffer and others have published on the impact of both”types” of CUREs. Cooper and the research team hypothesized that “being able to analyze data that you personally collected would have a positive impact.”
Munstermann described the evolution CURE they taught and helped develop. The research question for the course is: is there an association between ecological traits between mammals and birds? Students develop their own hypothesis and experimental design. The instructors provided all students with all species to be assigned and a spreadsheet with information on habitat association, motility, feeding mode, and mode of life. One group analyzed daata they collected while a second group worked on data on identical species but collected by “professional scientists.” Thus, half of the student pairs analyzed their own data and half analyzed provided data, and the assignments were randomized. Pre and post surveys were used, and the number of students was about 30 per group. The post survey included the LCAS and to what extent they agreed that they conducted real research in the CURE. Cooper and colleagues found no major difference in students’ perceptions of collaboration, iteration, or discovery between students who analyzed scientists’ data or their own. Both pre and post surveys included previously-developed scales for measuring self-efficacy, science identity, and science communication values. They did observe gains in self-efficacy. Cooper noted that “students who analyzed their own data showed greater gains in science identity than students who analyzed scientists’ data.” Cooper concluded that “regardless of the data they analyzed, students reported similar levels of experiencing collaboration, iteration, and discovery in the CURE.” Cooper and Munstermann had several questions during the question and discussion session. One question was about the level of the CURE and how to introduce analysis of results. Munstermann did note that this was an upper-level evolution course. Munstermann and Cooper explained that they were really careful about not making it obvious that there were different data analyses setups. Moving forward, the presenters noted, there may be some ethical concerns about denying students the ability to analyze their own data. Cooper noted that they used previously validated survey instruments and conduct interviews with undergraduates who talk through the questions to make sure they are being interpreted as expected. One question was about the student body composition at the University of Hawaii and possible differences at other institutions. I had not considered that the student composition was primarily white and Asian. Emotional and cognitive ownership were new concepts that I will now consider!
