Can We Quantify if It's a CURE?

Autor/inn/en	Beck, Christopher W.; Cole, Megan F.; Gerardo, Nicole M.
Titel	Can We Quantify if It's a CURE?
Quelle	In: Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, 24 (2023) 1, (6 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Beck, Christopher W.)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1935-7877
Schlagwörter	Qualifications; Undergraduate Students; Student Research; Student Experience; Biology; Student Attitudes; Curriculum Evaluation; Science Laboratories; Identification + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Qualifikation; Qualifikationsstufe; Studentenforschung; Studienerfahrung; Biologie; Schülerverhalten; Curriculum; Evaluation; Curriculumevaluation; Lehrplan; Rahmenplan; Evaluierung; Identifikation; Identifizierung
Abstract	Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) rapidly have become more common in biology laboratory courses. The effort to implement CUREs has stimulated attempts to differentiate CUREs from other types of laboratory teaching. The Laboratory Course Assessment Survey (LCAS) was developed to measure students' perceptions of how frequently they participate in activities related to iteration, discovery, broader relevance, and collaboration in their laboratory courses. The LCAS has been proposed as an instrument that can be used to define whether a laboratory course fits the criteria for a CURE or not. However, the threshold LCAS scores needed to define a course as a CURE are unclear. As a result, we examined variation in published LCAS scores among different laboratory course types. In addition, we examined the distribution of LCAS scores for students enrolled in our research-for-credit course. Overall, we found substantial variation in scores among CUREs and broad overlap among course types in scores related to all three scales measured by the LCAS. Furthermore, the mean LCAS scores for all course types fell within the main part of the distribution of scores for our mentored research students. These results suggest that the LCAS cannot be used to easily quantify whether a course is a CURE or not. We propose that the biology education community needs to move beyond trying to quantitatively identify whether a course is a CURE. Instead, we should use tools like the LCAS to investigate what students are actually doing in their laboratory courses and how those activities impact student outcomes. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	American Society for Microbiology. 1752 N Street NW, Washington, DC 20036. Tel: 202-737-3600; e-mail: journals@asmusa.org; Web site: https://journals.asm.org/journal/jmbe
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01