A large-scale undergraduate research project: You can do it and we can help

Abstract

The first recommendation of The Boyer Commission Report (1998) was that research-based learning be made the standard experience for students at university. The Australian university system has come a long way since 1998, but we still have a long way to go before our students have large-scale access to apprenticeship-style UREs, and avenues for communicating their findings. The ALURE project has been funded for 2013-2014 under the OLT National Leadership initiative. It uses a Community of Practice (CoP) to develop and resource academics to help students conduct and communicate undergraduate research on a large scale. The current foci for the program are science and maths students and the academics who teach them. In this session we will present some of the undergraduate research programs our ALURE CoP have devised and championed. We aim to highlight the scope, quality, and impact of the programs so that potential new CoP members can appreciate the power and flexibility of ALUREs while considering the possibility of mentorship for their own teaching context. Session participants will have the opportunity to share and workshop their own ALURE ideas. We are currently welcoming new CoP members to the ALURE project and we aim to provide our session participants with helpful feedback and support as they consider, design, and initiate large-scale undergraduate research projects. Reference: The Boyer Commission
on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University. Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities (1998) Retrieved June 14, 2013, from http://www.niu.edu/engagedlearning/research/pdfs/Boyer_Report.pdf