Thanks again to everyone who participated in the Forum on Undergraduate Research and Inquiry for Student Learning on May 20.  As part of the day Mick Healey facilitated a “liquid cafe” where folks could move around to 6 different tables to discuss key issues related to engaged students in research and inquiry activities.  Below please find a summary of the discussion at each table.  We’ll be presenting these notes along and/or presenting them to our Academic Development Centre, Research Office and higher administration.  

Which idea will you take forward??

1. How can the outcomes of student research/inquiry/SoTL best be communicated, celebrated and disseminated?

• Celebrate student research, don’t judge it at events. Events should be for exchanging ideas among researchers. Consider using a moderator or commentator on a panel to point out why this work is important or how it connects to what else is out there.
• Recognize that there is not only one mode of dissemination. There are different levels and different genres. Students can disseminate with faculty or alone. They can present to department, faculty, institution, community, world. Recognize the possibilities that social media offers, everything from facebook to twitter to YouTube—90 second video pitches about research. Explore e-portfolio of student research, but recognize that we also need to help students find the language to explain what they are doing and why it matters. Think about undergraduate journals whether online or print. Consider a campus research conference with not only papers and posters, but also alternate presentations like drama or cooking. Does the conference have a conference proceedings of papers, or even of abstracts, that students could refer to.
• Recognize that students need funding for conference attendance but also for the research itself. Recognize also that there can be on campus opportunities that don’t require a lot of extra funding. A class assignment could be to attend research colloquia by students.
• Students could organize dissemination opportunities themselves, but there needs to be scaffold /support in place to help maintain dissemination efforts across the years, for example, a student club.
• Recognize and celebrate different types of research : humanities, social science, science, performance.
• Consider institutional outreach—for example, undergraduate students presenting to high school students.
• Provide opportunities for multiple experiences of dissemination at different levels of program, from first year to capstone.
• Consider dissemination not only at the end but also during a project. Linked In can link different researchers working on similar projects. Recognize importance of teaching students when and how much to share .
• Provide institutional support through central calendar identifying when and where different events are happening. Create a database of research interests/resources. Get marketing on board.
• Raise awareness of undergraduate research and inquiry among and between students, with alumni, among community partners, among faculty, among administration. Invite the community in. Encourage students to take course work further. Promote value of this work to government.

2. How can we help students reflect on the process of learning they experience in undertaking research/inquiry/SoTL activities?

Reflection Processes:

• Papers with/out prompting questions
• Life maps
• Photo essays
• Private posts in blackboard
• Student-authored learning plans
• One minute papers
• Ask students for preferred platform (ex. social media)
• Offer 3-4 choices of process (everybody’s not the same)
• Connections to other courses, life

Reflection Prompts:

• Why are you here?
• Who are you?
• What are your habits of heart (values)? Of mind (knowledge)? Of hands (skills)?
• What evidence is there of you learning in relation to outcomes (or your goals)?
• What do you want me to know right now? (open topic – anything)

It’s important to think of assessing reflective work differently than other assigned work; some suggested no assessment at all; others suggested assessment on communication or content covered rather than thought or reflection.

This relates to the valuing of reflection – we don’t make time for it (in class or in our own teaching practice); it’s not valued in the Academy (subjective, not “real learning” or knowledge, some faculty question its use in learning at all).

We then moved to the courage required to honestly confront issues that arise in reflection, the courage it takes to fail, to take time to think and reflect, to let go of content to create space.

3. How can we assess the work students undertake in research/inquiry activities?

Role

• Balance between coach and judge roles, in some cases research partner and evaluator, makes evaluation difficult because of power relations.
• Need to communicate why the research process matters – how each step contributes
• Role is to turn students into first responders, able to critically assess their research and that of others with reference to internal knowledge as well as external criteria

What is Assessed

• Need to be clear what will be evaluated and how
• Need to assess process, product, personal growth – so need to incorporate reflection
• Assessing product may be problematic – your view vs peer reviewers at a journal/conference
• Evidence of incorporation of feedback should be part of assessment
• Emphasis may depend on different disciplinary norms – medicine vs philosophy
• Have authentic projects, close to what students would be doing in professional practice, further research

When/How of assessment

• How do we assess our own discipline-based research? – accept or not in peer-reviewed venues – so A or F – A vs F is easy – understanding/marking gradations more difficult
• Alternative grading – could it be Pass/Fail, Credit/Non-Credit, Achieved/Needs Improvement/Exemplary – more gradations = need more criteria – But this is a GPA killer in many structures – can overturn entire system or just not include that course in the average.
• Need to change cultural norms around assessment.
• Needs to be rich in feedback
• Formative assessment early and throughout process, summative assessment towards the end – Better if student recognizes areas that need work early on
• Can include self-assessment, peer assessment where appropriate, need good mechanisms, scaffolding, time – students need to develop skills in self assessment
• Rubrics may be problematic – useful as conversation, not as tickboxes, may stifle innovation
• What to do with the student who grew enormously but may not have finished with great process or product vs student who is competent, completes task but no evidence of deep change/growth
• Give early formative assessment, delay posting grades so students read comments and try to anticipate grades
• Difficult to have peer assessment in Directed reading courses with only one student, also difficult to grade n of 1 – no comparators

Results of assessment

• Can you fail research – maybe on process, not fair on product – (time constraints etc)
• If the formative assessment has been effective, the student should not ‘fail’ at final summative assessment

Student characteristics may affect assessment

• Incoming grades have little to do with student outcomes.
• Difficulty around pre-judging students – those who do well in non-inquiry learning may not do well in inquiry learning – problematic to talk of A students
• Students may need scaffolding in self evaluation
• How independent is the student – will impact workload for faculty member
• What is the motivation for taking the course – marks/resume-building vs inquiry –may affect level of independence
• Why should I take on a C student – might not help with my research, might not do student much good either
• Change in demographics of students (we came from culturally rich backgrounds, less true of many of our students = reflection, and other learning skills must be scaffolded.
• Research courses – assessment easier if starting out with elite who can do it.

4. How can faculty and students research into student research/inquiry/SoTL activities?

• most people who came to this table found this to be a tricky question (threshold concept?)  Some time was spent discussing the barriers to research on this topic: time constraints (of the semester), ethics issues, power dynamics, etc.  We agreed that the faculty part of the question was easier than the student part.
• we also came to some constructive suggestions, such as suggesting we would need to be sure to not just get the “A” students involved in such initiatives.  We also thought it was important to demonstrate that we value the findings and outcomes of SoTL research,  to communicate this to students and to let them know how it’s being used.
• there were people around the table who were from institutions where they are just starting to support faculty in doing research, and there was some concern about trying to start too big i.e. getting students involved might have to be a progression in some contexts as getting faculty started is still a priority.  We discussed ways to get faculty started doing research in a new area, such as the importance of connecting people and building community.  Some possibilities include research groups, journal clubs, and communities of practice.  Also discussed the importance of starting small: do what is reasonable considering time and resources, and what will have impact
• motivation for faculty: get students involved in T&L research as a way to help them to think differently about learning
• make space for students to provide input eg. have students present their ideas to for T&L research agendas to faculty, advisory boards, etc.
• a Gen Ed or Directed Studies course on SoTL which was taught by someone outside a department or program could provide a safe space for students to do some SoTL work without power, bias issues, etc.

5. How can we align research/inquiry with the intended learning outcomes of a program and build in progression?

• To ensure all students can achieve the intended learning outcomes, research and inquiry must be embedded within the required courses of a degree program. If research and inquiry are exclusive to options or electives, then not all students will achieve the same learning outcomes.
• The goals of research and inquiry in undergraduate classrooms may differ greatly from traditional scholarship goals. The emphasis must be on the process, not the finished product and course learning outcomes should reflect this process. Thus, an experiment that does not work cannot be viewed as a “failure” if students learned the experimental process by going through the exercise.
• Administrators need to support in-class research and inquiry by not having the expectation that research = grant money coming into the institution. Undergraduate research and inquiry are more likely to have a financial cost, than a financial benefit and often no publishable results will be produced. Again, the teaching benefit is in the process, not the product. There needs to be an institution-based desire for research/inquiry learning outcomes.
• There is a false dichotomy between teaching and research. Most exceptional teachers are competent researchers and most exceptional researchers are competent teachers.
• There needs to be a focus on the intrinsic value of classroom research and inquiry to the students. The research/inquiry should be done for their own sake – not necessarily to contribute to someone’s research program. Learning outcomes should be the motivation for undergraduate research and inquiry.
• To ensure progression from one course to the next, students could keep a research portfolio throughout their entire degree. This portfolio could be managed electronically – kind of like a Blackboard site, but for the entire 4 years of the student’s degree. This would allow students and faculty meta-reflection from one course to the next.
• Undergraduate research and inquiry is better facilitated when there is a connection between an institution’s strategic plan and learning goals and the classroom learning outcomes.
• We have to acknowledge that students often need to attain certain background knowledge before they can fully engage in research and inquiry.
• A suggestion was made that the work of John Willson at University of Adelaide provides a good framework for scaffolding the progression of undergraduate research skills embedded within the curriculum. Willison and O’Regan (2006) examined increasing levels of autonomy as students progressed through their degrees, which is applicable to building in progression.

6. How can we change the perceptions staff and students may have of one another to enable them to see each other as partners in research/inquiry/SoTL?

Students need basic information to empower them in deciding if an elite research experience is something they want and are prepared to undertake:

• who is accepting new USRAs
• what does a student need to apply (course work, resume, paragraph describing their understanding of a paper by the faculty member)

How can faculty and departments share this information with students:

• in class
• New Student Orientation events
• advisors
• Liquid Cafe

There is a difference between partnerships and mentorships. Even in partnerships it won’t necessarily be as equal partners based on the relative experience levels of faculty and students.

Faculty supervisors need to clearly define expectations up front:

• What level of contribution is required to be a partnership vs a mentorship
• What are the short term benefits (training, pay, course credit)
• What are the long term benefits (conference presentations/poster, journal article)
• What level of contribution is required to be included in the long term outcomes

Students need to clearly define their expectations up front:

• Are there specific skills they want to learn
• What level of commitment (amount of time per week and length of commitment) are they willing to offer at the outset (may change as interest grows)
• Reference letter
• Journal article

We can flip the research experience similar to the flipped classroom approach. As partners in the research experience, students are expected to read journal articles and come to the research experiences prepared to contribute as a partner.