Technological advances and increased familiarity with meeting virtually assures that this type of extramural collaborative research will continue to grow. Over the last few decades, external collaborations have grown from accounting for no more than 10% in the 1970s to greater than 35% in 2005 ( Jones et al., 2008). When identifying collaborators, researchers increasingly pay less attention to location and instead focus on expertise, which is often found at other institutions. This shift toward collaboration is most likely because modern research requires extensive specialization scientists today are expected to be heavily specialized in one field while being conversant in other fields ( Kuczenski et al., 2005 Labov et al., 2010 National Research Council, 2012). Over the last 30 years, the number of collaborative scientific papers has increased dramatically, while the number of single-author papers has dropped ( Jones et al., 2008). Importantly this study occurred in a diverse community of STEM disciplinary faculty from 2- and 4-year institutions, illustrating that exposing students to structured external collaboration is both feasible and beneficial to student learning.Ĭollaboration is essential in the current research environment. Students in the ec-CURE had the greatest gains in experimental design self-reported course benefits scientific skills and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) importance. The sharing of ideas, data, and materials with an external faculty member allowed students to experience a level of collaboration not typically found in an undergraduate setting. The ec-CURE differs from a regular CURE in that students work with faculty member from an external institution to refine their hypotheses and discuss their data. In this study, we established three cohorts of students: 1) no-CURE, 2) single-institution CURE (CURE), and 3) external collaborative CURE (ec-CURE), and assessed academic and attitudinal outcomes.
While some CUREs have expanded, involving multiple schools across the nation, it is still unclear how a structured extramural collaboration between students and faculty from an outside institution affects student outcomes. For these research experiences to be authentic, they should reflect the increasingly collaborative nature of research. The implementation of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) has made it possible to expose large undergraduate populations to research experiences.
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