General Overview
On campuses with high enrollment such as UF, it can be problematic to place large numbers of students in one-on-one faculty mentored research. Course Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) classes have been developed nationally to provide more students with the opportunity to acquire research experience. Also, they have been recognized as increasing access to undergraduate research for diverse student populations. For faculty, CURE classes offer you the opportunity to accomplish goals in your research program.
What exactly is a CURE class and how does it differ from a traditional class?
There is no one specific template for a CURE class - instead CURE classes will typically take shape around the proposed research. The syllabus and course is built to included 80% research and 20% related topics (a course that includes 50% research is a research intensive class). While the research is likely to be highly specific, the context provided by the rest of the course should generalize the experience, providing students with wider insights into the research process, ways of thinking and access to future research opportunities. The related topics can cover skills training, ethics, objectivity, bias, and research in society.
Expectations
CUREs involves a class of students addressing a research question or problem that is of interest to stakeholders outside the classroom. During a CURE, students engage in scientific practices, such as collecting and analyzing data and developing and critiquing arguments. Several features make CUREs distinctive as a pedagogy. Specifically, during CUREs, students:
- Have opportunities to make relevant discoveries, meaning that students assist in generating results that are novel and are of interest to some group of stakeholders, such as other researchers in the field.
- Engage in iterative work, meaning that they must trouble-shoot, problem-solve, and repeat aspects of their work for the research to progress.
- May have opportunities to communicate their research results to that group of stakeholders, either orally or in writing or both. This means that students have to engage with the literature related to their research in order to understand the rationale for the research their are doing and to articulate how their results build and contribute to this body of knowledge.
Because students in CUREs are contributing to an ongoing research project, the research will progress as students work on it. This means that students' work and students themselves will raise new questions that takes the research in new directions. Thus, students who enroll in the CURE during different semesters may learn different knowledge or skills as the focus and goals of the research change.
Information from this section collected from CUREnet site. Links to an external site.
CURE@UF
In 2019, 14 CURE courses were developed to provide 200 incoming freshmen with authentic research experiences. These students represented a unique demographic as 74% already planned to pursue postgraduate studies in research or professional school. (ROLE survey, 2019).
The 14 courses were developed in the Summer and Fall of 2018, with the assistance of the CURE team, Dr. Christine Miller (Entomology & Nematology), Dr. Ginny Greenway (CURE post-doc) and Dr. Anne Donnelly (CUR). While research looks very different across disciplines, a general framework which broad general concepts and skills are incorporated around the central research or data collection project was provided. A shared Canvas space ensured continuity across courses and disciplines.
Since 2023, 85 CURE classes have provided 750+ first-year students with research experience as part of their curriculum. Assessment of these courses indicated that student self-reported gains were moderate or large for 25 learning goals.