Abstract of "A Design Approach to Undergraduate Research for 1st-Year Students"

This chapter explores undergraduate research in a blended general education course at California State University, Chico. It implements undergraduate research in a 1st-year general education course focused on the success of underserved students reinforces the importance of intensive design work to foster a learning environment consistent with the community of practice literature and the need to provide appropriate scaffolding and support to move students toward inclusive excellence. The chapter discusses the design approach and theoretical basis for this instance of undergraduate research from three different aspects: course design, distributed mentoring, and scaffolded assignment sequence, and includes a discussion of student outcomes and suggestions for future research on high-impact practices (HIPs). The implementation of undergraduate research in the Anthropology-English course is one example of an approach that builds on the HIPs literature and puts learning theory into practice at a scale that can serve relatively large groups of students.

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