In higher education, online students are often precluded from research assistantships that are more accessible for campus-based students. At a highly ranked institution for online learning, we developed the Undergraduate Research Program (URP) to address this gap in opportunities for online students. The URP is designed to engage fully distanced…

Purpose: The National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) programs are traditionally delivered in-person and full-time (40 h per week) for 10 weeks during the summer. However, this type of format has the potential to limit broader student participation. This study aims to compare learning assessment data between a…

Immigration is one of the most contentious topics in contemporary American politics. This study presents the planning, implementation, and evaluation of a program of faith community dialogues on immigration developed in partnership between a public university, a faith-based group of volunteers, and Catholic congregations. Based on data from…

Research honours programs are traditionally used in Australian universities to build and evaluate research capacity in undergraduate health students. The effectiveness of such programs in achieving this in the current higher education landscape has not recently been explored. This mixed methods study examined 66 health research honours programs.…

This study measured competencies and conceptual knowledge developed by undergraduates who participated in a 2-month interdisciplinary research project at a large urban university in Southeast US. Working in groups, students chose a shared topic of significant interest and examined it through the combined lens of multidisciplinary insights toward a…

This paper presents a study which aims to provide an understanding of the impact of using the components of a digital mobile-based behavior change intervention (mBCI) to support critical thinking skills during university student research projects. The digital behavior change interventions are tools and techniques designed to induce behavior change…

The COVID-19 pandemic and the migration to online learning have presented unique challenges to undergraduate research, reducing opportunities to participate in high-impact practices, including in-person summer research programs. To mitigate some of these effects, Loyola Marymount University adapted its summer undergraduate research program,…

Undergraduate research has been shown to be an effective practice for learning science. While this is a popular discussion topic, there are few full examples in the literature for introductory-level students. This paper describes the Geoscience Education Research Project, an innovative course-based research experience designed for…

In this paper, I describe preliminary work on a new research project in learning analytics at Arizona State University. In conjunction with an innovative remedial mathematics course using Khan Academy and student coaches, this study seeks to measure the effectiveness of visualized data in assisting student coaches as they help remedial math…

Engaging undergraduates in research is essential for teaching them to think like scientists, and it has become a desired component of classroom and laboratory instruction. Research projects that span an entire semester expose students to a variety of concepts and techniques and allow students to use experiments to learn scientific principles,…

The National Science Foundation contracted with Abt Associates to conduct an evaluation of its Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) program, which supports intellectually substantive collaborations between U.S. and foreign researchers in which the international partnership is essential to the research effort. The evaluation…

The School of Engineering, Mathematics, and Science (SEMS) at Robert Morris University (RMU) was awarded a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund scholarships to 21 academically talented but financially challenged students majoring in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Each…

Undergraduate research programs are commonplace at many universities. However, little research has been conducted to evaluate their ongoing and long-term effectiveness from the standpoint of the undergraduate student researcher. In an effort to gain perspective from the student researcher, including their thoughts on such a program, a survey was…

The National Science Foundation contracted with Abt Associates to conduct an evaluation of its Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) program, which supports intellectually substantive collaborations between U.S. and foreign researchers in which the international partnership is essential to the research effort. The evaluation…

This paper uses triangulation to assess key aspects of a team-based, participatory action research programme for undergraduates in rural communities across northern Ghana. The perceptions of the programme and its effects on the students, staff and host communities are compared, showing areas of agreement and disagreement. The successes of the…