Cultivating Inclusive Research Experiences Through Course-Based Curriculum

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CURE) courses provide a systematic way for students to engage in a sustained, hypothesis-driven research experience within a classroom setting. While CURE courses are well defined in the natural sciences, our university expanded the implementation and assessment of CUREs to other disciplines, such as psychology and other social sciences (Auchincloss et al., 2014). We examine the generalizability of a commonly used CURE assessment, the 17-item Laboratory Course Assessment Survey (LCAS; Corwin, Runyon, Robinson, & Dolan, 2015) to disciplines outside of biology, including nonbiology natural sciences and social sciences, and to larger-scale classrooms. Multiple-indicator multiple-cause models (MIMIC) were used to evaluate measurement invariance and differential item functioning of the three LCAS factors (collaboration, discovery and relevance, iteration) by discipline and class size. Findings show that the LCAS items perform outside of the context of small biology laboratory courses and in large-scale psychology courses, such as introductory statistics and research methods. Additionally, to understand the factors that relate to CUREs within psychology, we identified effects of several demographic, psychosocial, academic factors on LCAS scores.

Duke Scholars

Author Kelly Hogan Biology