Understanding CUREs: Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences

Our Guest Blogger today is Dr. Erin E. Shortlidge. Erin is a postdoctoral research scholar in Dr. Sara Brownell’s Biology Education Research Lab in the School of Life Sciences at ASU. Her Ph.D. is in Biology where she studied the ecology and physiology of moss reproductive success. Her current research endeavors are in understanding the ecology of higher education. As an education researcher she is particularly interested in course-based research and in identifying what factors make for effective and impactful learning environments.

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What is a CURE? Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences

National reports such as Vision and Change (AAAS, 2011) and the National Research Council’s BIO2010 have called for systematic shifts in life science education – including giving all undergraduates the chance to do research. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (or CUREs) are an answer to these calls. In a CURE, research is embedded into the life science laboratory course itself, providing all students who enroll in the course the opportunity to do research.

The work that undergraduates do in a CURE is different than in a traditional lab or in inquiry activities. The proposed dimensions that define a CURE are that students engage in¹:

1. scientific practices
2. discovery-based work where the outcome is unknown
3. broadly relevant or important research
4. collaboration with one another and the instructor
5. the iterative nature of science

While there is much diversity in the research topics explored in CUREs, two distinct CURE models have emerged, both revealing student benefits: (1) a local model where faculty members develop and teach a CURE stemming from their own research interests (e.g. ^2,3), and (2) a national model where a CURE is developed by an individual faculty member, and then is expanded and taught by a network of faculty (e.g. ^4,5).

A great way to develop a local CURE is for faculty, instructors, and/or advanced graduate students to identify a way to scale up their own research interests into a lab course. Here the ultimate goal is for the undergraduates to begin to understand the process of science by actually doing science - including experiencing all of the messiness and uncertainty of research- and then learn how to effectively communicate their results.

Further, faculty who have developed and taught CUREs report benefits to themselves in that CUREs are a way to bridge some of the often-forced disparities between teaching and research, and that they genuinely enjoy their time in the classroom (Shortlidge et al. 2015, in review).

For example, consider Tad Fukami, a Stanford University researcher who turned one of his research projects into a CURE in an introductory biology lab course:

He was interested in the ecology of nectar-dwelling microbe communities in Mimulus flowers. Students collected data each week on this system, adding to a large central database, from which they drew upon to ask their own research questions. Three scientific research publications have now resulted in part from the data collected by the students in the course ^6-8.

For more information on CURES please visit CUREnet (http://curenet.cns.utexas.edu), and check out the referenced articles below.

References

1 Auchincloss, L. C. et al. Assessment of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences: A Meeting Report. CBE-Life Sciences Education 13, 29-40, doi:10.1187/cbe.14-01-0004 (2014).

2 Brownell, S. E., Kloser, M. J., Fukami, T. & Shavelson, R. Undergraduate biology lab courses: comparing the impact of traditionally-based "cookbook" and authentic research-based courses on student lab experiences. Journal of College Science Teaching (2012).

3 Rhode Ward, J., Clarke, H. D. & Horton, J. L. Effects of a Research-Infused Botanical Curriculum on Undergraduates’ Content Knowledge, STEM Competencies, and Attitudes toward Plant Sciences. CBE-Life Sciences Education 13, 387-396, doi:10.1187/cbe.13-12-0231 (2014).

4 Lopatto, D. et al. Undergraduate Research: Genomics Education Partnership. Science (New York, NY) 322, 684 (2008).

5 Jordan, T. C. et al. A broadly implementable research course in phage discovery and genomics for first-year undergraduate students. MBio 5, e01051-01013 (2014).

6 Vannette, R. L., Gauthier, M.-P. L. & Fukami, T. Nectar bacteria, but not yeast, weaken a plant–pollinator mutualism. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 280, 20122601 (2013).

7 Belisle, M., Peay, K. G. & Fukami, T. Flowers as islands: spatial distribution of nectar-inhabiting microfungi among plants of Mimulus aurantiacus, a hummingbird-pollinated shrub. Microb Ecol 63, 711-718 (2012).

8 Peay, K. G., Belisle, M. & Fukami, T. Phylogenetic relatedness predicts priority effects in nectar yeast communities. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, rspb20111230 (2011).