Anya Goodman
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, CA·Education Research
Working in a research lab can pull undergraduates toward science careers, but it is less clear which features of a research experience actually produce those benefits. This project asks how the structure of an undergraduate research experience shapes what students gain from it.
- Fields
Education Research
Social Science
Psychology
- Topics
undergraduate research experiences
STEM education
job characteristics theory
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Adapt an established organizational-psychology work-design survey to the context of STEM undergraduate research experiences through iterative interviews with subject matter experts, including bilingual participants.
- Validate the adapted instrument as a multi-dimensional measure of the work-design structure of undergraduate research experiences at primarily undergraduate institutions.
- Relate measured features of research-experience structure to self-reported student outcomes such as science identity, design thinking and data literacy.
- Translate findings into a blueprint and toolkit that STEM instructors can use to design academic-year undergraduate research experiences, disseminated openly via a project website and Creative Commons.
More about the research
The focus is research done during the academic year at primarily undergraduate institutions, a setting studied less often than summer programs.
Why it matters
Faculty who mentor undergraduate researchers currently have little evidence about which design choices matter most. By identifying which structural features of a research experience are most associated with outcomes like science identity and data literacy, this work could give instructors concrete guidance for building academic-year research opportunities, including for linguistically diverse student populations.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Liping Liu
Lawrence Technological University, MI·Education Research
Implement an existing toolkit of training videos, activities, instructor guides and workshops for engineering undergraduate research mentors through a new Undergraduate Research Excellence Network that coaches mentors in making adoption plans.
Jennifer Scott
Towson University, MD·Education Research
Identify the skills undergraduates need to participate effectively in an astronomical research collaboration, and develop assessments that measure those skills.
Melissa Peacock
Northwest Indian College, WA·Earth & Environmental Science
Run academic-year environmental science internships in which NWIC undergraduates do lab, field and data analysis research on Salish Sea water quality, seafood safety and ecosystem monitoring.
The school
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo: 7 labs on PI Pages, $38M a year on research.
More about California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
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