Agile Research Studios: Orchestrating Communities of Practice to Advance Research Training

Undergraduate research experiences enhance learning and professional development, but providing effective and scalable research training is often limited by practical implementation and orchestration challenges. This paper introduces Agile Research Studios (ARS)--a socio-technical system that expands research training opportunities by supporting research communities of practice without increasing faculty mentoring resources. ARS integrates and advances professional best practices and organizational designs, principles for forming effective learning communities, and design of social technologies to overcome the orchestration challenge of one faculty researcher mentoring 20 or more students. We present the results of a two-year pilot of the Design, Technology, and Research (DTR) program, which used the ARS model to improve the quality of learning, produce research outcomes, and lower the barrier to participation while increasing the number of students who receive authentic research training.

[1]  Joonas Koivumaa,et al.  “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in just Five Days” , 2017 .

[2]  Mitchel Resnick,et al.  “Thick” authenticity: new media and authentic learning , 1999 .

[3]  Jenny Gavriel.  Cognitive apprenticeship , 2015, Education for primary care : an official publication of the Association of Course Organisers, National Association of GP Tutors, World Organisation of Family Doctors.

[4]  Laszlo Bock,et al.  Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead , 2001 .

[5]  Charles K. Fadel,et al.  21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times , 2009 .

[6]  L. Schauble,et al.  Design Experiments in Educational Research , 2003 .

[7]  S. Gall.  Help-seeking: An understudied problem-solving skill in children☆ , 1981 .

[8]  E. Gerber,et al.  Extracurricular Design-Based Learning: Preparing Students for Careers in Innovation* , 2012 .

[9]  Mike Cohn,et al.  User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development , 2004 .

[10]  Alistair Cockburn,et al.  Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game (2nd Edition) (Agile Software Development Series) , 2006 .

[11]  Larry Ambrose,et al.  The power of feedback. , 2002, Healthcare executive.

[12]  David Lopatto,et al.  Undergraduate research experiences support science career decisions and active learning. , 2007, CBE life sciences education.

[13]  D. Wood.  Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality and Development. By Carol S. Dweck. Psychology Press, Hove, 1999. pp. 195. £29.95 (hb). , 2000 .

[14]  Jeff Sutherland,et al.  Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time , 2014 .

[15]  Charles M. Reigeluth,et al.  Instructional-design Theories and Models : A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory, Volume II , 1999 .

[16]  G. Salomon.  Distributed cognitions : psychological and educational considerations , 1997 .

[17]  Mary Frank Fox,et al.  Research, Teaching, and Publication Productivity: Mutuality Versus Competition in Academia. , 1992 .

[18]  P. Pintrich.  A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Motivation and Self-Regulated Learning in College Students , 2004 .

[19]  Brian C. Nelson,et al.  A design-based research strategy to promote scalability for educational innovations , 2006 .

[20]  C. Dweck.  Mindset: The New Psychology of Success , 2006 .

[21]  D. Schoen.  Educating the reflective practitioner , 1987 .

[22]  L. Shulman.  Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching , 1986 .

[23]  Thomas C. Reeves,et al.  An introduction to educational design research , 2013 .

[24]  P. Pintrich,et al.  "Should I ask for help?" The role of motivation and attitudes in adolescents' help seeking in math class. , 1997 .

[25]  Ann Medaille,et al.  How Do Students Get Help with Research Assignments? Using Drawings to Understand Students' Help Seeking Behavior , 2016 .

[26]  Elizabeth Gerber,et al.  Pair research: matching people for collaboration, learning, and productivity , 2014, CSCW.

[27]  Alan Bain,et al.  The Learning Edge: What Technology Can Do to Educate All Children. Technology, Education--Connections (TEC) Series. , 2011 .

[28]  Allan Collins,et al.  The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences: Cognitive Apprenticeship , 2005 .

[29]  Brenda Bannan-Ritland,et al.  The Role of Design in Research: The Integrative Learning Design Framework , 2003 .

[30]  M. Miller,et al.  Leveraging CSCL technology to support and research shared task perceptions in socially shared regulation of learning , 2015 .

[31]  Ann L. Brown,et al.  Psychological theory and the design of innovative learning environments: On procedures, principles, and systems. , 1996 .

[32]  Carol Midgley,et al.  Avoiding Seeking Help in the Classroom: Who and Why? , 2001 .

[33]  Jeffrey S. Foster,et al.  SCORE: agile research group management , 2010, Commun. ACM.

[34]  Joanna C. Dunlap.  Problem-based learning and self-efficacy: How a capstone course prepares students for a profession , 2005 .

[35]  Nerys Williams.  Work Rules: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead. , 2017, Occupational medicine.

[36]  Matthew W. Easterday,et al.  Design-Based Research Process: Problems, Phases, and Applications , 2014, ICLS.

[37]  Anne-Barrie Hunter,et al.  The Benefits of Multi-Year Research Experiences: Differences in Novice and Experienced Students’ Reported Gains from Undergraduate Research , 2012, CBE life sciences education.

[38]  Paul R. Hernandez,et al.  Patching the Pipeline , 2011, Educational evaluation and policy analysis.

[39]  Pierre Dillenbourg,et al.  Technology for Classroom Orchestration , 2010 .

[40]  Scott Lash,et al.  Postmodern Ethics , 1996 .

[41]  Demetra Evangelou,et al.  Engineering Students' Beliefs About Research: Sex Differences, Personality, and Career Plans , 2012 .

[42]  Peter Maurer,et al.  The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences , 2022 .

[43]  Erin L. Dolan,et al.  The Undergraduate–Postgraduate–Faculty Triad: Unique Functions and Tensions Associated with Undergraduate Research Experiences at Research Universities , 2010, CBE life sciences education.

[44]  S. Järvelä,et al.  New Frontiers: Regulating Learning in CSCL , 2013 .

[45]  G. Olson,et al.  From Laboratories to Collaboratories: A New Organizational Form for Scientific Collaboration , 1997 .

[46]  Carol A. Lundberg,et al.  Quality and Frequency of Faculty-Student Interaction as Predictors of Learning: An Analysis by Student Race/Ethnicity , 2004 .

[47]  Abbie Brown,et al.  Design experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in c , 1992 .

[48]  Heather Thiry,et al.  The Role of Student-Advisor Interactions in Apprenticing Undergraduate Researchers into a Scientific Community of Practice , 2011 .

[49]  Marsha C. Lovett,et al.  How learning works , 2010 .

[50]  Mariel Miller,et al.  Scripting and awareness tools for regulating collaborative learning: Changing the landscape of support in CSCL , 2015, Comput. Hum. Behav..