Science research projects for undergraduates and high school students: adapting tiny earth in danish education

Initiatives to engage undergraduate students in research-like projects within science and technology are arising based on aims related to integrating research and teaching at universities. Student engagement and persistence is influence by their experienced competence and autonomy but novice students do not yet have qualifications to work with research literature and methods. Therefore, it is a challenge to scaffold students’ scientific inquiry in a way so that they fell they can do well in such initiatives.
Here we report on the adaption of the research-based course Tiny Earth to the context of both a first-year university course for engineering students and a service-teaching program for high school students. The course addresses socio-scientific issues related to antimicrobial resistance and engages the students in authentic discovery of new antibiotics based on principles of student-sourcing. The adapted course is designed with an emphasis on scaffolding students’ work with both research content, processes, and data.
It is analysed and compared how students are engaged in inquiry tasks during the phases in the discovery process in the two different educational contexts. By the use of pre- and post-surveys and interviews with students and teachers it is reported how students’ self-efficacy and experienced mastery is affected by participation. Referring to theories on research-based teaching we investigate and compare how students in these two contexts perceive their participation in and contribution to authentic research. It was described and discussed how the participation affects the students’ perception of the relevance of science in relation to socio-scientific issues and as a future career choice.