Abstract
Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) are high-impact practices that provide students with a variety of benefits. While these benefits are widely lauded, many students face barriers to obtaining these limited opportunities, like students lacking ample scientific research cultural capital (SRCC) - the awareness, understanding, and knowledge about the research enterprise that can help them obtain UREs (Cooper et al., 2021). While several studies (Cooper et al., 2021; Grineski et al., 2018) have suggested that interventions aimed at teaching students about UREs could be extremely valuable for their decision-making and have considerable implications for increasing equitable access to UREs, to our knowledge, published studies and publicly available resources that include strategies or best practices to teach students about UREs are lacking. This study addresses this knowledge gap by creating, implementing, and evaluating Research Workshops aimed at increasing students’ SRCC, with the ultimate goal of leveling the playing field for all students interested in URE participation. More specifically we sought to 1) examine and compare the interest, awareness, and perceptions of UREs of introductory biology students from a four-year minority-serving university (FYU) and a community college (CC) and 2) examine the effects of in-class Research Workshops on introductory biology students’ interest, awareness, and perceptions of UREs at the FYU and the CCs.
We developed and implemented two in-class workshops at an FYU and CC in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 to teach students about UREs (e.g., what they are, opportunities available, benefits of participating) and how to identify and secure experiences (e.g., using online resources, contacting professors). We employed multiple data sources, including surveys and whole-class focus groups, to evaluate the effect of the Research Workshops. We used pre-post surveys to assess changes in students’ interest in participating in UREs at the beginning and end of the semester. Likert-type survey items helped to assess students’ current experiences, awareness, and perceptions of undergraduate research experiences. The focus groups served to help us learn 1) how the Research Workshops impacted students’ attitudes toward UREs, 2) how students envision undergraduate research and what they may gain from the experience, and 3) what students viewed to be the most impactful lessons from the Research Workshops.
Analysis of the open-ended survey question “Are you interested in participating in research as an undergraduate? Why or why not?” was used to determine what effect the workshops had on students’ interest in participating in research. Chi-squared results revealed that FYU students who participated in the workshops (intervention group) were more likely to have a positive change in their interest in URE participation than students in the non-intervention group (X2 = 7.12; df = 2; p-value = 0.028). Multinomial logistic regression revealed that FYU students in the intervention group had approximately five times greater odds of experiencing a positive change in their interest in participating in UREs compared to students in the non-intervention group. Additionally, being male and a STEM major was associated with higher odds of having a positive change. An Exploratory Factor Analysis of the survey Likert-type items resulted in the formation of several constructs, of interest was the Student-research Awareness construct. There was a statistically significant increase (p = 0.037) in Student-research Awareness scores for the students who participated in the Research Workshops, which was not observed in the non-intervention group.
Descriptive analysis of students’ written responses to the focus group questions revealed that 56% of FYU and 69% of CC students had a positive attitude change toward undergraduate research, citing an increased awareness of URE opportunities, feeling that research was accessible, or gaining a deeper understanding about UREs and their benefits as the reason for this shift. While there were nuanced differences in the percentage of students who had attitude changes across institutions, FYU and CC students provided similar rationales for their answers. Several themes emerged from student responses regarding the most important information they learned through the workshops, including knowledge about undergraduate research opportunities, the benefits of participation, the breadth of research diversity, and the realization that research can be accessible to them. Additionally, students reported learning practical skills such as identifying and securing research experiences, communicating effectively with faculty, and being resilient in the face of rejection.
Taken together, these results suggest that the Research Workshops are having a positive impact on introductory biology students at the FYU and CC. Students perceive they are learning essential knowledge and skills about undergraduate research, which they will need to secure a URE. This project made rules and norms associated with finding and securing undergraduate research more explicit and communicated them to students to build their SRCC. Our results suggest that students in our study gained embodied SRCC and are equipped to use their cultural capital to make informed decisions regarding their participation in undergraduate research.