Each summer program will start with a week-long intensive workshop that begins on the morning of the first day with a presentation by an outside expert who can examine the research process, particularly as it relates to undergraduates using print and electronic resources. We will have morning sessions conducted by on-campus specialists who will lead the faculty in guided discussion of some of our basic assumptions and of recognized problems that students face as apprentice researchers. Topics addressed will include anticipating the problems undergraduate researchers experience in the hybrid print/electronic information environment, developing effective research assignments, exploring ways of supporting students throughout the research process with guidance and feedback, helping students learn how to think critically about sources, particularly making choices among electronic materials and between print and electronic resources, and developing techniques for classroom research and assessment. Afternoon sessions will allow time for faculty to respond to that morning's topic and to share their experiences and discuss common issues. During part of at least two afternoons faculty will divide into small groups to discuss best practice for teaching research skills in the humanities, the social sciences, and the sciences, and into groups based on course level. An integral part of the afternoon sessions will be time spent drafting research assignments and classroom activities and these will be shared as they are developed.
We anticipate, for example, that a biology teacher may want to build research experiences into a required course for majors by developing a sequence of assignments that familiarize a large class with the biological research process, from learning how to identify the features of a published research paper in the field, to scanning current literature to identify pressing issues in a subdiscipline, to formulating a research hypothesis and conducting a literature review, to writing up a formal research proposal. A history teacher may want to develop a methods course that involves students in locating unique primary sources in the college archives or a local county history museum, develop commentary for those sources that situate them in historical context and annotations that explain particular points of the documents, and then prepare a web exhibit of them. A teacher of an interdisciplinary first term seminar may want to model college-level inquiry for new students by developing a series of exercises and assignments that take them through each step of the research process with frequent feedback and guidance. A teacher who has taught a research-intensive sociology course for many years and who wants to become more familiar with current information resources may want to redesign the course to emphasize the use of new electronic resources.
The program will continue throughout the summer as faculty complete course design. In the weeks following the workshop, faculty will have the opportunity to work closely with librarian/liaisons to their departments, to practice teaching in the electronic classroom, and to continue conversation by means of an e-mail discussion list for participants and regular informal meetings. We will meet at the end of the summer to share redesigned syllabi and will continue to collaborate through the academic year with the meetings and discussion list. We will sponsor a reunion of these initial faculty participants at the end of the first and second years to compare notes. Selected faculty from the first summer will speak about their revised courses to second year faculty and otherwise serve as resources.
During each school year following the workshops, the library will sponsor two events for students and faculty involved in the redesigned courses, one a panel of student/faculty research partners discussing their work and another a panel of regional publishers-the University of Minnesota Press, a representative from a scholarly journal, a small regional publishing house, and someone involved in electronic publishing-to talk about the publication process. We feel optimistic that these activities will be productive because the original idea of focusing this project on faculty development and pedagogical issues came from the faculty focus groups. In addition, similar summer faculty development programs at Gustavus have been successful for writing-across-the-curriculum, the first-term seminar, and service learning.
After the grant period, the library will foster ongoing infusion of research activities throughout the curriculum by sponsoring a series of short workshops on issues relating to pedagogy for undergraduate research held during the semester, by continuing to track student research presentations and publications, and by serving as a clearinghouse for teaching materials and assessment tools. Pending a successful evaluation of the pilot program, we will hold similar summer workshops every three years for new faculty or faculty newly interested in revising their curriculum. After the initial pilot program is completed we will also encourage departments to examine or assess their programs to see where student research fits into the majors, seek support for departmental retreats if there is an interest in revising programs to more intentionally build in sequenced research apprenticeships into their curriculum, or otherwise strengthen an existing research focus.