Project Info

What advice do students give to each other in high structure courses?

High structure courses are courses that include pre-class content acquisition and assessment, in-class active learning and application, and after-class review assessment. It is unknown what kinds of advice students give to each other after being enrolled in one of these types of courses and whether this advice differs between types of courses (biology, engineering, non-majors, etc). This project will provide insight into what students think are the best ways to succeed in this type of course design and thus can be used to develop motivational strategies to help future students succeed in high structure courses.

For more information:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3105924/

Student Preparation

Qualifications

-Proficiency with excel
-Basic understanding of statistics
-Willingness to explore social science and education research
-Self-starter, motivated, and curious

Time Commitment

3-4 hours/week

Skills/Techniques Gained

Students will learn how to:
– design educational research studies
– search for and interpret educational literature
– enter data and store data appropriately
– analyze data with excel and R
– summarize and present results both orally and in writing

Mentoring Plan

At the start of the project, the student and Dr. Shaffer will share expectations for what each of them want out of the mentoring relationship. There will be weekly meetings, at which time research-course-life balance will be discussed, in addition to the progress on the research project. More formal mid-term and end-of-semester discussions will take place to ensure that goals and expectations are being met and that all is going well with the research experience.