From Evidence to Scholarship

Transforming Undergraduate Student Research in the Digital Age

Project Goals

1. Understand student research needs

What are faculty expectations for student research, and how can students develop those scholarly practices?  How are research practices changing as students have more access to digital tools and content?  During the first project phase, we will gather information that guides the rest of the project.

2. Improve student access to digital materials

We will facilitate access to digital materials, including course reserves, licensed electronic resources, and other digital collections by developing processes and best practices for producing and disseminating optimal electronic texts.

3. Build quantitative skills

Working closely with faculty, we will help them integrate data analysis, visualization, and presentation into their mid-level courses that have a quantitative focus. We will explore the use of cloud-based tools and mobile devices for quantitative work, and will offer support for scholars working with data sets and related software.

4. Support independent student research

We will develop a recommended workflow to help students locate and organize readings, annotations, and other types of scholarly evidence such as data and media.  This system will help students manage their own collections of sources and notes and effectively use those materials in their papers and presentations.