Experiential Learning: Undergraduate Research Methodology Instruction Through Directed Research and Mentoring.

Many faculty members avoid teaching research methodology at the undergraduate level and at the same time many students fear the research methods course and express difficulty in grasping the often abstract constructs of research. Institutions that offer undergraduate methodology do so through one or two courses usually at the junior or senior level that includes design, methods, statistics, and theory. Little wonder faculty avoids teaching the course and students express antipathy toward the course. Teaching undergraduate methods is different from graduate methods in that at the undergraduate level, faculty place greater focus on the logic of research and design. One way to capture the undergraduate attention is to emphasize the learning experience by making methodology real and mentoring the undergraduate student through the research process i.e. learning by doing. A pedagogical approach as such creates a culture of ownership over the research process and excites students as they engage in the collaborative experiential process. This paper discusses an experiential and problem-based approach and outcomes of teaching undergraduate research methods. The preliminary findings suggest that students who participate in the experiential and problem-based learning on average exit research methods with significantly higher grades than students who did not engage in experiential and problem-based learning and that post test assessment scores between the two groups of students provide evidence of greater content knowledge. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]