Fall 2013 Faculty Workshop: Scaffolding Research Skills for Undergraduates
(Mankato, MN) – Friday, November 8, 2013, and Saturday, November 9, 2013
The Fall Faculty workshop brought Dr. Bethany Usher to campus from George Mason University. Faculty members have observed that undergraduate students benefit by participating in research and creative projects, but many students don’t have the skills to be independent scholars. In fact, the students for whom undergraduate research might be most beneficial are the ones least prepared to do it when they arrive at college.
Dr. Usher, at George Mason University, has adopted a model of scaffolded skills for undergraduate students, to be used both in and beyond the classroom. Discovery experiences are those that introduce students to what it means to do research, and lets them find out how they can get involved. Students involved at the Inquiry level start to understand how scholarship works in their fields, and learn how to evaluate the others’ research, and get the tools and knowledge to produce their own scholarship. Once students are at the Creation of Scholarship level, they can make significant contributions to authentic scholarly work in their fields.
This talk was broadly applicable to faculty who work with students in the classroom and those who mentor them in independent projects, across all disciplines. The workshop was hands-on and interactive, and faculty members who co-teach classes were encouraged to attend as a team. At the end of the workshop, participants had a map and a plan for the re-designed course. Here is the course map that I developed during this workshop. And here is the course syllabus that I developed during this workshop.
For additional background information, visit OSCAR.gmu.edu, and see Healey and Jenkins (2009) [PDF] Developing undergraduate research and inquiry (808 KiB) published by the Higher Education Academy.