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Undergraduate Research as Collaborative Pedagogy and Research - Collaborative Research: Practical Implementation and Student Benefits PDF-NOTE: Internet Explorer Users, right click the PDF Icon and choose [save target as] if you are experiencing problems with clicking. Print

Collaborative undergraduate research (UR) requires faculty to be adept at dividing research projects into various components that are learner specific or malleable enough so as to invite co-teacher/learner development of specific and concise projects that may be attainable within a semester. In short, it means that a research project requires teacher and student to be in active communication with each other about the nature of the overall project and to have a capacity to determine together what the student can actually undertake as part of the overall work. Careful arrangement of plans for the overall project, determination of what might be needed for it, and outlining of specific goals and action steps toward completion of the project can contribute to the success or failure of the UR project.

One of the challenges faculty face in UR projects involves assessing the level of a student’s capability to engage in collaborative work. The idea that knowledge is constructed, discovered, and transformed by students is not new. However, the notion that faculty and students can develop UR learning environments where undergraduate students can contribute specific insights to an overall research project is. It requires an ability on the part of the teacher to diagnose what a student can accomplish in one or multiple terms of study. The collaboration could be compared to the work of building a house. Not all carpenters or skilled tradesmen will work on all facets of the project; they will use the skill they have to provide what the house needs. For example, plumbers focus on all aspects of plumbing. They do not attempt to do the wiring or roofing. So students might also be regarded as skilled workers who can contribute in significant ways to UR projects. Matching student skill and aptitude with discrete learning goals can achieve significant results and expand student learning overall.

According to Brandon Cornett, a Wabash College student who worked with me on a recent UR project:

The most interesting work I did involved my study of Native American culture. The things that I encountered while studying Native Americans were foreign to me. As I would discover, studying something completely new is exciting and provides an opportunity to engage an UR project without preconceived notions about what facets of the study might most occupy the work. In our UR project, we started with the basics. Our study began with separating the idea of religion and worldview. This method enabled me to understand the foundations of a culture, paying attention to the details, while operating within a scope narrow enough not to be overwhelming. None of the classes I had taken before were taught like this, but it was something that I gladly applied to every course thereafter. Using the elements of Native American cosmology that I had learned in an introductory course to Native American religions, I began my UR project on Mississippian cosmology. I knew that the UR project would be a lot of work since it involved trying to cover such a diverse grouping of cultures around the Mississippi river valley that were associated with Mississippian culture in the eighth and twelfth centuries CE. Dr. Myhre suggested that I focus on a specific area called Cahokia mounds located near St. Louis, Missouri. Limiting the scope of our research was incredibly beneficial. It allowed me to pay particular attention to the details rather than searching for overarching patterns. This was one part of the overall study with which Dr. Myhre is engaged. Not many other researchers have extensively explored Mississippian cosmology through geoform alignments, archaeological artifacts, and remnant tribal stories. Every week that we met, we made progress on our research. Most of the things we investigated were new and exciting. We made connections and speculations that others had not yet published. The key to our successful research was always keeping the details in perspective.

The collaborative work involved analysis of gorget designs and astronomical maps, geographical maps of Mississippian sites showing locations of mounds and other geoform structures, archival work, and reading remnant tribal stories. The research is ongoing and may eventuate in a publishable paper about Mississippian cosmology written in correlations between gorget designs, astronomical movements, traditional stories, and mound alignments.



 

This website contains archived issues of Religious Studies News published online from March 2010 to May 2013, and PDF versions of print editions published from Winter 2001 to October 2009.

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