Experimental/Data-Intensive Social Sciences
Powerpoint Presentation

Leader:Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr., Fasken Professor of Distinguished Teaching, Department of Psychology and Educational Psychology, Texas A&M University

Recorder: Ashley Mouberry, Doctoral Candidate, College Student Personnel, University of Maryland, College Park

Since the 1960s, social science departments have experienced a growth in undergraduate majors that far exceeds the rate of growth of university enrollments. Psychology majors have been a large part of this success story, accounting for more than 70,000 baccalaureates annually in the United States. More than a third of those students graduate from research universities where opportunities for significant research experiences are typically available for only a select minority. This session identified some of the barriers that minimize student research involvement in the social sciences and some model programs that have been successful in overcoming these barriers. Participants developed ideas for other research-involvement models and strategies for dissemination of these models to research university social science departments. The following questions formed the basis of the discussion:

• Why is a research experience important to undergraduate students? What is it that we want them to gain from such experiences? How can we ensure the quality and comprehensiveness of the research experience?
• How can those research experiences be embedded in the classroom?
• How can faculty-supervised and independent research experiences be extended to a larger number of students?
• What educational preparation do students need to benefit maximally from research participation?
• What are the respective roles of faculty and graduate students in research supervision and how can their participation be encouraged?

Session Introduction
Dr. Benjamin began the session with a quotation by Harry Kirke Wolfe, a psychologist and educator known for his inquiry-based teaching at the University of Nebraska during the early 1900s, which emphasized the importance of research as an opportunity for growth and development: "If we go back to childhood it is plain that research is the sole method of growth. Watch the child in his cradle investigating his fingers, his toes, his toys, the wallpaper, anything that attracts his interest. Try the lecture method with him and observe his disgust! No, worse, his indifference. The beginning of interest and of development is in self-initiated movements."

More recently, the Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University's published a report entitled Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities (1998), which emphasized the importance of providing undergraduate students at research universities with an inquiry-based education and suggested that "research universities have too often failed, and continue to fail, their undergraduate populations" (p. 5). The report presented a new model for undergraduate education at research universities, one that made research-based learning standard and called for involving undergraduates in all steps of the research process. The report recommended that a student's undergraduate career should end with a culminating capstone research project that allows the student to demonstrate the research competences he or she has developed. Recognizing that faculty members have limited resources and incentives for adopting this new model, the authors suggested training graduate students as teachers and reevaluating the faculty reward systems. All of the report's suggestions were geared toward fostering the development of a community of learners.

Four years after the report was published, however, Dr. Benjamin noted, research universities continue to see decreased state support, expanded undergraduate enrollments, increased use of adjunct faculty to teach undergraduate courses, and increased pressures on faculty and staff to publish or receive grants. Sadly, today a student could graduate with a baccalaureate degree without ever being taught by a full-time faculty member, that is, having been instructed only by adjunct faculty and gradate students. A change needs to occur in the research university culture, either at the administrative level (top down) or among faculty (bottom up), neither of which are likely to occur. One problem is that the model presented by the Boyer Report is really a liberal arts model. There are a number of differences between a research university and a liberal arts college, such as the student/faculty ratio, the faculty's role as teachers, the class sizes, the opportunities for students to write and speak, the availability of undergraduate laboratories, and the availability of research assistants and associates. In addition, the faculty reward structure at a research university is generally based on the ability of the faculty to publish or obtain grants, hold editorships, sit on editorial boards and grant panels, and train and place graduate students.

However, there is some good news for research universities and especially for social science educators at those universities. When one looks at the myriad of problems facing the world in the 21st century, one can clearly see that most are problems that fall in the domains of the social sciences. These problems include the need to reduce heart disease, cancer, and stroke; to enhance compliance with medical directives; to increase medical screenings; to reduce violence in homes, schools, and communities and between countries; to reduce risky behaviors; and to reduce divorce rates. Although at times the social and behavioral sciences have been considered 'stepchildren' in the field of science, this is no excuse for educators, researchers and students in these fields to take a back seat. It is the social scientists who can convince the people to use the new technologies and innovations of the 21st century, and if people do not use them, what is the advantage of having them at all?

Social scientists have many things going for them as they embark on the journey into the 21st century. Not only are there many diverse research opportunities in the social sciences, but they also inherently lend themselves well to student research involvement. To capitalize on these qualities social science educators must attempt to increase the quality and quantity of research experiences offered to undergraduates, embed research in the classroom experience, increase the use of computer labs, and increase the funds available for undergraduate research programs.
Several important questions must be addressed, however, before jumping headfirst into making these changes:

• How will recruitment of students be handled?
• Who will train students, and how much training will they receive?
• Who will supervise students?
• How will the students' role in the research be defined?
• How will student researchers be evaluated?
• How can one make the research experience meaningful?
• What resources will be needed to make this happen?
• What are the incentives for faculty to get involved?

Main Points

It is important for undergraduate student researchers to be involved in all levels of research. Science is a process. The facts presented under assumption A lead to assumption B building on assumption A. Students need an appreciation for the process and need to understand it.

The undergraduate role in research has become trivialized; often students are assigned smaller or less meaningful tasks. Involving undergraduates in the research should have an impact on that research. Undergraduates should be encouraged to question the research process and even to develop their own research designs. Often undergraduates have questions about the big picture, yet are only given opportunities to explore small subparts of the picture.

One important question to consider is: How much of what we call "undergraduate research" is just free labor (ex. cleaning test tubes, only allowing students to do one facet of the experiments, etc…). Students are often thought of as cogs in a big machine. How do we get around this? What do we hope that students can get out of a research experience? How does one help them to make meaning of the research process?

While it is acceptable for undergraduate students to do some of these tasks, it is also important that the student's supervisor ask him or her to process the meaning of the experience. Supervisors should ask students to articulate back to them what the big question is and what steps must be taken to get an answer to that question (some of those steps include using clean test tubes). Some undergraduate students only want to be involved with a small piece of the experiment or research because the bigger pieces are scary or intimidating. The important point is to provide the students guidance and help them make meaning of their experience, regardless of whether or not they are involved with a large or small piece.

Much social science teaching in the past has been fact-based. If the goal is to move students toward understanding the process, then a different style of teaching is needed. We want students to understand how to learn, how to approach a problem as a scientist, to be inquisitive, and to be process oriented rather than outcome oriented.

Most students at large universities will not be able to do much beyond very basic activities, some will want to become involved in research at some moderate level, and a very few will have the skills and desire to engage in research at the most advanced level. Therefore, it is important to have multiple levels and opportunities for students to become involved. Although one size does not fit all, all students can do some form of research and should be required to do so.

The fact is that faculty members have limited time, and may be able to design meaningful research experiences for a few, but it would be impossible for faculty to involve all students. The kind of experiences that have been presented are very idealistic and it is impossible to provide all students with these experiences with the current level of resources.

For new faculty, adopting this approach is particularly difficult because there is no incentive for them. Overseeing these types of guided experiences takes time away from grant writing and publishing. Departments and universities must endorse mentorship of undergraduate research and other activities related to undergraduate education as important goals. Otherwise, individual faculty members who are not senior or well-established may be taking a risk in participating. The messages that faculty get from department chairs are very different from the messages they get from their provosts and chancellors, and furthermore, budget cuts have made it very difficult to compensate faculty for their efforts. How do we all get on the same page, with the same goals? How do we solve the problem of competing interests? Perhaps department cultures need to change.

Challenges

Research projects in the social sciences often take years, which makes it difficult to involve undergraduate students because they are only on campus for a short amount of time.

How do you account for the 'knowledge gap'? Some faculty feel that they cannot use graduate students in their research until they have been in school for at least a year, so how will they possibly be able to use undergraduate students in a meaningful way? Undergraduate students lack the necessary training on the research process and are too inexperienced.

If we change our viewpoint and our goals, however, to focus on involving students in the process and teaching them about the process, then we can no longer use undergraduates' inexperience as an excuse.

What do we do about transfer students? If we think of designing research experiences in staged models, beginning during the freshman year, how do we involve transfer students?

Incorporate research into the classroom, using 15-20 minutes for lecture and the remainder of the time for small group breakout sessions in which students can become involved intellectually, ask questions, and process with their classmates. Simulation software programs may also be useful.

Can these be done at a price that parents and students can afford? The ideas that have been presented are nice, but how can we offer them at a reasonable price? Perhaps the educational process needs to be restructured. As it exists now, delivering a process-driven education would be really difficult.

What are college graduates' attitudes toward research? The prevailing attitude is why worry about outer space when there are other more important problems that need to be addressed. When we have students graduating from research universities with negative attitudes about research or little knowledge about research, we are in trouble because those students are the ones who will be involved in voting on the continuation of research.

Examples of Effective Programs

Temple University has set up an oversight system in which students who are working with faculty members must complete a learning contract detailing their educational goals, the activities they will engage in to meet those goals, and other activities (cleaning test tubes, etc.) they will be involved in throughout their experience. Weekly records and midterm progress reports are submitted to the main overseer of the system, and at the end of the semester the students must write a final report in which they are asked to evaluate their own progress and the meaning of the experience to them.

The American Psychological Association is working along with the National Science Foundation to develop grants for Integrating Data Analysis, in order to increase scientific literacy among students and make them more comfortable with numbers, which will in turn make them more comfortable with research in the long run.

Recommendations

Community-based research provides students with an opportunity to be engaged with an issue and to work collaboratively. Problem-based service learning fits neatly with many social science fields. Engaging students in community action learning, allowing them to carry out research that addresses social problems, will allow students to gain real life skills while participating in meaningful experiences.

An effective technique for students who want to learn about the research process is to allow them to read grant proposals for the research project they want to become involved in and ask them to write a summary of the grant proposal and the research process. Also, allow students to ask any questions they may have regarding the research project. Another effective technique, especially applicable to research in the social sciences, is to allow undergraduate students to conduct research in teams either with other undergraduates or with graduate students.

Follow-up Issues

• How do you involve students in the most meaningful way in a research experience?
• How do we make our classes more inquiry-based, more about how one asks questions as opposed to what the facts are?
• How do you get faculty members involved and invested in this venture? What has worked on other campuses? How have appeals been made from departments, faculty heads, etc.?
• How do we improve the experience and make what we currently offer better than it is? How do we expand it to reach more students?
• How do we retrain faculty to facilitate process-oriented classes?
• What about ethics? The Institutional Review Board? It is important to create an ethical culture in our teaching and our research?
• What do students think is the role of research?
• What is the pedagogical usefulness of inquiry-based instruction?
• Why do we want people learning processes instead of facts?
• How do we integrate the subject matter that we teach and the process that leads to it?
• Knowledge is the motivator. So why is inquiry-based instruction so important?
• Are we just trying to turn undergraduate students into graduate students?

Resources

Web sites:
American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/

American Psychological Society: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/

Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities: http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf

Recommended Reading:
McGlashan, A., Temple, P., Gordon, R. (2000). Problem Based Service Learning: A Fieldguide for Making a Difference in Higher Education. Keene, NH: Antioch New England Graduate School.