TEAM RESEARCH: A TIERED PEER MENTORING APPROACH TO UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH

Team Research is a one-semester course built around a tiered peer-mentoring approach to research. The students are placed into teams of 3, where each student is at a different stage in their undergraduate career. One student has had only an introductory earth science course, another has had 3-5 courses, and the team leader has had a number of upper level earth science courses. The whole class works together to formulate scientific questions about the focus area, and possible testable hypotheses. The teams then each decide on a specific hypothesis they want to test, and plan a strategy for how they will test it using field-based measurements and sample collection, followed by laboratory analyses. There is a week of fieldwork, and the teams return with samples, which they prepare for the respective analyses they need to do. The semester ends with an informal poster session at which all students are invited to present their research along with the Team Research teams.

I ran this course at Wayne State University for the first time in fall 2015, and it went exceptionally well. The course is limited to 12 students, and enrollment is by application so as to ensure team roles are properly filled. 6 of the 12 students continued to work on research, 4 continued working on related work in my lab, and at least one has already been accepted to graduate school. The course is only 2 credits, and students are encouraged to apply for the course a second time in a different role. The students in each of the 3 roles on a team gain very different experience. The team leader and middle-level student solidify their own knowledge by teaching their teammates, and the intro-level students get a total-immersion introduction to many of the courses they have yet to take. The team dynamic also resulted in formation of study groups for other courses, and is positively contributing to a community of undergraduate research in the department. The Team Research concept can be easily adapted to almost any kind of research that involves a field/sample collection component.