The Chronicle of Higher Education (August, 17, 2007, by Lila Guterman, ) has two articles : What good is undergraduate research anyway? (p. A12) and Research on undergraduate research (A14) Most teachers assume that having undergraduates conduct research is a good way to teach. So, it's refreshing to see some researchers asking themselves whether that assumption is warranted.
The article, Research on undergraduate research, looks at three separate research projects, one at the University of Colorado at Boulder (N = 76), published in Science Education, another at Grinnell College (N = 1,135), published in Cell Biology Education, and still another at SRI International (N = 8,000+). The report of the SRI research can be found by clicking here.
The longer article, What good is undergraduate research anyway?, provides some analysis and commentary. The results of the study above support the assumption that undergraduate research is a good way to teach. Interestingly, it looks like conducting undergraduate research convinces some, but not many, additional students to change their previous career plans and attend graduate school instead. Some students learn that research does not suit them.
On the other side of the coin, results indicated that "authentic" instead "mundane" undergraduate research experiences were more valuable, educationally. Faculty note that teaching via undergraduate research experiences takes more time than teaching in other ways.
We can agree on both the worth and the cost of supervising undergraduate research. Our text reveals our bias toward undergraduate research (we hope).
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