Exploring experiences

of Failure in CUREs

A CURE for Failure

From this research, we hope to understand the vastness of the student experience of failure in course-based undergraduate research experiences (or CUREs). This will allow us to seek evidence-based approaches to mitigating the negative consequences of failures, while supporting potential learning. This may also help us identify specific strategies to building student resilience in science courses. Ultimately, our aim is to facilitate and empower student learning in science spaces!

What do we mean by “Failure”?

We define the failure experience in science as choices/actions that present challenges and lead to an unexpected outcome or unproductive scientific task and the choices/actions taken in response to that challenge or outcome. Challenges describe situations where students could experience tensions or struggle.

We hope to study failures that occur in the context of engaging in the technical aspects of research during data collection and analysis. These could include failures in method, like selection of primers that do not yield amplification of desired DNA sequences, or failure in concept, like an approach to an investigation that does not account for all variables.

These failures are important because they a) occur in undergraduate learning contexts, b) are clear, tractable units of change, c) have potential for iteration and improvement within the time scale of a semester or year (though this time is not always provided).

Intrapersonal constructs of study

  • This construct refers to the emotional distress caused by the perception of a challenge where the perceiver could potentially demonstrate inadequate performance. The questions on this instrument ask how students feel about their failures being perceived by themselves and others.

  • This construct refers to the students’ aims when engaging in learning. We use an achievement goal model to describe student orientation towards learning outcomes as mastery-approach (motivated to master content), mastery-avoidance (motivated to avoid not mastering content), performance-approach (motivated to perform well in front of others), and performance-avoidance (motivated to avoid performing poorly in front of others).

  • This construct refers to the extent to which students perceive their instructors to understand, care about, and accept students as individual learners in their classrooms. The instrument that we use to test this construct was validated for use in lecture settings, so using it in CUREs will be a novel use of the tool.

  • Like the other constructs being tested, coping is a multidimensional construct that describes how students respond to the failure experience in adaptive or maladaptive ways which may impact how students engage with future challenges. Coping with failure can manifest through actions or expressions that are challenge-engaging or challenge-avoiding. While the tool we use measures more than these two dimensions, we will only look at how students measure on these two dimensions.