BackgroundExposing Undergraduate students to Authentic

Research Experiences (AREs) has been shown to be beneficial

•More sophisticated understanding of science, •Nature of science, improved attitude to science,

•Promotion of careers in science•Enhanced critical thinking,• Improved self-efficacy

I would like to bring this ARE into the teaching lab in a 1 semester time frame.

My question

• What are the gains from my inquiry based lab?• Do these gains match the gains realized by the

AREs • What did my students learn?

Study design• Develop a series of questions on the learning gains that we

would like to record.• Get feedback from existing students on the questions that we

are asking- do they understand the questions; can they think of other questions

• Use the instrument as a pre and post test so that we can look at a gain from when new students start and when they end

• Put in an open ended question to capture anything that we missed on the survey.

• Look for a validated instrument that includes the questions that we are looking at- can we adopt it?

• Are we capturing any other data that we can use to triangulate