Taxonomy for Developing Undergraduate Research Experiences as High-Impact Practices

The call to increase student participation in high-impact practices (HIPs) to improve student learning, satisfaction, and retention is being answered in a multitude of ways. Faculty and staff involved in undergraduate research see this as validation of their efforts, which it is. However, Kuh & O’Donnell’s (2013) work challenges research mentors to reevaluate their efforts in order to intentionally provide an even richer and more engaging research experience. Making undergraduate research a high-impact practice requires thinking inclusively about how the research experience can be scaled across the curriculum, adjusted to increase student engagement, and adapted to student preparation and desired learning outcomes. This article presents the work of a statewide multi-disciplinary faculty team that developed a scalable taxonomy for incorporating high-impact practices into student learning experiences and to serve as a roadmap for designing and assessing undergraduate research experiences. The authors offer a layered taxonomy, with milestones of increasing engagement, that establishes what sets a HIP undergraduate research experience apart from other HIP experiences and what distinguishes good practices from high-impact teaching. Aligning undergraduate research experiences with best practices across disciplines, types of research opportunities, and student achievement level was a key goal in the taxonomy development. We present cases where the taxonomy was applied to research opportunities embedded in general education courses across disciplines and different modalities. In these vignettes, the utility of the taxonomy as a tool for assessing course design and teaching effectiveness is examined and common challenges in development, implementation, and assessment of student learning experiences are also explored.

The Effect of Learning Experience on the Information Literacy of Students in the Ri-Png Border During Covid-19 Period

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic presents challenges for higher education institutions, especially in Indonesia's border areas. The transformation of face-to-face learning models to distance learning models impacts the learning experience of students, especially those who are completing writing research proposals and theses that require adequate information literacy skills. This study aims to explore the effect of student learning experiences on information literacy skills. The research data were obtained from respondents from four universities in Merauke. Purposive sampling technique is used with the criteria of students who have taken research methodology courses and are taking or have taken proposal seminar courses. One hundred respondents have filled out a questionnaire distributed online. Based on the data analysis, learning experiences contributed 17.60% to students' information literacy skills. Furthermore, each increase in student learning experiences will contribute to 0.40% of information literacy skills. These research findings can be valuable information to be developed to the next stage in making modules and learning media that can provide a good quality learning experience to improve student literacy skills, especially in writing research proposals/theses. With this module or learning media, it is hoped that it can prepare students to write research proposals and theses.