Insights into student gains from undergraduate research using pre/post assessments
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Science and Medical Education
- Keywords
- Harvard Forest, Undergraduate Research Experience (URE), retention, survey, STEM
- Copyright
- © 2016 McDevitt et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Insights into student gains from undergraduate research using pre/post assessments. PeerJ Preprints 4:e1981v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1981v1
Abstract
Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) in STEM fields expose students to scientific research and are thought to increase student retention in STEM. We developed a pre/post survey and administered it to participants of the Harvard Forest Summer Research Program in Ecology (HF-SRPE) to evaluate effectiveness of these programmatic goals. Between 2005 and 2015, the survey was sent to all 263 HF-SRPE participants; 79% completed it. Results, controlled for prior experiences, revealed significant improvements across all learning goals. Prior laboratory research experience and perception of being a respected member of a research team were positively associated with gains in research skills and abilities to do and present research. Although the pre/post surveys did not indicate changes in students’ goals of pursuing STEM careers (or, more narrowly, ecological ones), the positive learning gains suggest that students with prior interests in STEM fields take advantage of UREs to solidify further their aspirations in STEM.
Author Comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints.