Research has shown that course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) can influence undergraduate students’ educational and career trajectories. Specifically, CUREs allows students to make discoveries, engage in iterative work, and develop greater ownership of their project. However, these specific features of CUREs do not completely capture the influence that CUREs have on students’ persistence and success in science. Building off of previous research, this project will explore whether and how the ways that instructors talk to students in CUREs vs. traditional lab courses may be an influential factor in the differential effects of these learning experiences. To explore this, we will collect audio recordings of instructors as they teach CUREs and traditional lab courses. We will analyze the recordings inductively and deductively using standard qualitative content analysis procedures, using frameworks of instructor talk, instructor immediacy, and research mentoring processes. We will then compare and contrast results from CURE and traditional lab courses. Students working on this project will develop primarily qualitative analysis skills (e.g., content analysis) and will begin to carry out descriptive statistical analyses.
