Aiming high: undergraduate research projects in computer graphics and animation

Six Steps for Cultivating Successful Undergraduate Research

The Importance of Scientific Publishing: Teaching an Undergraduate How to Swim the Entire Length of the Pool

In this paper we share our approach into the design of undergraduate research course at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM). The course design process, description and instruction delivery are discussed. The lessons learnt will be highlighted along with experiences and challenges from a first offering of the course during winter term of 2011. As a first assessment, major benefits of the course include for both students and faculty through providing increased interaction, increasing student intellectual maturity, and furthering faculty research projects.

This study of 285 BSW students over a 4-year period examines the students' initial attitudes toward learning research and identifies associated characteristics. In contrast to social work students' reputation of being “research reluctant,” findings reveal considerable variation, with a large portion of students reporting overall positive attitudes. Ordinary least squares regressions revealed that women and students with less statistical knowledge are more fearful of research courses, while older students and those with greater levels of social work empowerment find research courses to be more appealing. The study findings suggest 3 pedagogical principles upon which various teaching strategies may be based.

This paper presents an undergraduate student research project which involved a new power diode called the super barrier rectifier (SBR) diode. Several projects incorporating SBR diodes in dc-dc converters performed by undergraduate students will be described. Challenges in conducting these projects along with results will also be discussed.

This article describes using Q-methodology to evaluate changes in attitudes about research among baccalaureate nursing students conducting Q-methodology studies as part of an undergraduate honors research program. Five senior students, who had designed Q-methodology studies, sorted 36 opinion statements about undergraduate research based on two conditions of instruction: (a) according to their current attitudes, and (b) according to their beliefs before they began the honors program. A two-factor final solution explained 70% of the variance. The Getting Ahead section of the study, associated with six sorting grids, also known as sorts, reflected positive beliefs about the professional benefits of engaging in undergraduate research. The Too Much Effort theme reflected beliefs held by three participants prior to engaging in the program. After engaging in an undergraduate research honors program where participants designed a Q-methodology study, this group of students reported gaining intellectual and practical skills and no longer found research to be as intimidating. [J Nurs Educ. 2021;60(2):96-98.].

Objective To explore the effect of tutorial system-based small group teaching model in clinical research teaching. Methods Include practical meta-analysis in the undergraduate courses of the 8-year program for the students that entered college in 2011 majoring in clinical medicine, and evaluate the effect by exams and questionnaire. Results The tutorial system-based small group teaching model helps to achieve the objective of fostering the ability of undergraduate students in medicine to do clinical research and to improve their humanistic quality. Conclusions The tutorial system-based small group teaching model in the teaching of practical meta-analysis and other undergraduate clinical research courses of the 8-year program is an effective method for improving the ability of medical students to do clinical research and cultivating personal humanistic quality. Key words: Ability to do clinical research; Tutorial system; Small group teaching; Eight-year program medical students; Meta-analysis

A goal of undergraduate geoscience programs is to prepare students for the geoscience workforce. In order to understand the extent to which programs succeed at this goal, we identified desired workforce skills, compiled undergraduate geoscience program requirements, and mapped workforce skills onto faculty responses to the 2016 National Geoscience Faculty Survey categorized by respondent-provided course names for majors-level courses (n = 1037). We used a Bayesian statistical model to determine the posterior probability of students practicing desired workforce skills in undergraduate geoscience programs, using program profiles as the model prior, conditioned by the likelihood of a student practicing workforce skills in each course category based upon survey responses. Probabilistic Monte Carlo simulations of students in each example program were used to calculate the likely number of courses in which a student practiced each skill. Activities to help students develop skills related to geologic reasoning, working as part of a team, quantitative skills (algebra), applying skills in new scenarios, evaluation of scientific literature, temporal thinking, spatial thinking, written communication, and managing uncertainty are frequently encountered by students; on average, students encounter these activities at least seven times during an undergraduate program. In contrast, students encounter activities to help them develop an understanding of societal relevance and systems thinking, on average, fewer than three times during an undergraduate program. Our results provide a snapshot, via instructors’ reporting, of the state of workforce skill development across undergraduate degree programs, and both the approach and data set can be built upon for future studies.

Although forestry and related natural resources (FRNR) undergraduate degree programs in the United States have become increasingly diverse in recent years, women and minorities remain underrepresented in multiple disciplines; this is particularly true in forestry undergraduate programs. We reviewed over one hundred reports and publications to help understand the critical issues that must be addressed to enhance diversity in FRNR undergraduate programs. Based on that review, here we summarize eight critical issues in recruiting and retaining a more diverse FRNR undergraduate student body, and we also present promising actions to address the issues. Our goal is to more widely communicate validated ideas and practices, thereby prompting further discussion and effective actions to make more tangible gains in enhancing the diversity of FRNR undergraduate degree programs in the United States in the future.Study Implications: To be effective managers and stewards of forestry and related natural resources (FRNR), professionals must be effective in developing, communicating, and implementing plans and actions. From recommendations for a single stand or forest, to community-level natural resource issues, to state, regional, and national policy decisions, FRNR professionals must be trusted by increasingly diverse stakeholders in our society. FRNR professions can become more diverse in terms of gender as well as race and ethnicity by developing and implementing actions that address specific critical issues in undergraduate enrollment. A more diverse and society-ready cadre of leaders in FRNR will help to ensure healthy biotic communities are restored, sustained, and valued while meeting long-run societal needs.

An Emergent Bottom-Up Categorization of Students’ LLMs Usage in an Undergraduate Research Course

A diverse workforce is necessary to reflect our communities and impact the health disparities of our increasingly diverse populations. Students from ethnic minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds face many challenges and barriers to their academic success. Faculty must try new ways of supporting the engagement of this student population to positively affect quality outcomes for the entire community. High-performing students were recruited from undergraduate research courses to participate in a study to determine how honors research mentoring programs affect the engagement of undergraduate nursing students from ethnic minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. Study participants who were mentored for 3 years had a retention rate of 98%, compared to a rate of 73% in the year before the start of the mentoring initiative with faculty. NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination)-RN pass rates were 95% for those in the mentoring program, compared to 84% for those not mentored. Of the students completing the program and passing the NCLEX-RN, 100% are employed in the local community. A competent and diverse nursing workforce is a priority for eliminating health disparities in rural and underserved communities. Supporting ethnic minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged students is valuable to bridging this gap and positively influencing our communities.

Although many educators now recognize the value of problem‐based learning and experiential learning, undergraduate‐level food science courses that reflect these pedagogical approaches are still relatively novel, especially in East and Southeast Asia. Leveraging existing partnerships with farmers in Vietnam, a food science course for students at Nong Lam Univ. was designed and taught. The aim was to give students the opportunity to work in small groups and conduct evidence‐based research with farmers, apply food science principles, and develop Success Skills, including the ability to think critically and communicate clearly. Drawing on the experience of 2 student groups, this exploratory study describes what students learned from the process of conducting research. In one group, students learned to work through and resolve the challenge of initial disagreement and misunderstanding with farmers and ultimately carried out a project that aligned with the students’ research interests and farmers’ needs. Another group of students learned to consider the financial limitations of farmers when attempting to develop solutions for problems and ultimately worked with farmers to address a different problem that was less financially taxing. It is important to note the challenges of planning and teaching a course in which instructors are not able to predict exactly what students will learn or experience. This is largely dependent on each student's prior knowledge, experiences, and interests; yet this study demonstrates the transformative potential of teaching a research‐based food science course that gives students authentic opportunities to identify and address real‐world challenges.

Background. The University of Namibia’s Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery programme includes compulsory research as part of the undergraduate curriculum. Each student is required to complete a self-directed research project. Objectives. To determine the senior medical students’ knowledge, attitudes, practices and barriers regarding their undergraduate research (UR) projects. Methods. A descriptive cross-sectional study with an online self-developed questionnaire was employed and distributed to students in their fourth, fifth and sixth years of study. Data collection occurred over a 1-month period. Results. Fourth-year (n=27/77), fifth-year (n=15/67) and sixth-year (n=28/80) students, totalling 70, participated. Most students (69%, n=48/70) did not find research interesting. Students felt that the research module did not prepare them well for the research project (73%, n=51/70) and respondents indicated a lack of research ideas (56%, n=39/70), with some needing to develop an original topic (64%, n=45/70). Students felt that there was poor collaboration between the research department and supervisors (77%, n=54/70). Communication with supervisors occurred through email (57%, n=40/70) and face-to-face meetings (37%, n=26/70). Insufficient time for consultation (74%, n=52/70) has been reported. Students chose cross-sectional studies (60%, n=40/70) to make data collection easier (74%, n=52/70). Students indicated that clinical exposure is prioritised in the curriculum (84.3%, n=59/70). Conclusion. UR is predominantly perceived as stressful and uninteresting, and student-supervisor engagement followed a ‘just-in time’ approach. Early scaffolding of research knowledge diminishes, with the emphasis on clinical content delivery. To foster a culture of research among students, a more scaffolded curriculum with protected research is required.

Over the years, the power engineering program at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez (UPRM) has prepared engineers to deal successfully with industry challenges. An important strategy in a power engineering curriculum renovation has been to give a more prominent role to undergraduate research. A new Energy Systems Instrumentation Laboratory (ESIL) has been established at UPRM to support the integration of undergraduate research within the power curriculum. ESIL is both a physical space and a teaching philosophy. It occupies two laboratory spaces at the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department, and it is also an environment where students are active participants in the learning process. Undergraduate research projects at ESIL provide an opportunity for students to study in detail theoretical concepts presented in class, improve their understanding of engineering principles and applications, and explore the frontiers of knowledge in power engineering. The ESIL also fosters the integration of teaching and research and the development of new teaching methods for the improvement of undergraduate education. This is done by adapting the results from projects to courses in the form of demonstrations and laboratory practices. Research projects also provide measurable outcomes of student work that can be used to comply with new ABET accreditation criteria.

Procedural content generation is helping game developers to create significant quantity of high quality dynamic content for video games at a fraction of cost of the traditional methods. Procedural texture synthesis is a sub category of procedural content generation which helps video games to have significant variations in textures of the environments and the objects across the progress of the game and to avoid repetition. Generative Adversarial Networks are a class of deep learning algorithms which are capable of learning the patterns and creating new patterns. In this paper, Generative Adversarial Networks is used for procedural content generation for original textures synthesis for video game development. This method is used by video game designers for autonomous redesigning of objects and environment textures. This process saves significant time and cost in video game development. The particular attention in this paper is on procedural synthesis of ground surface textures. The generated texture samples are visually acceptable and have mean score of 2.45 with 0.1 standard deviation after 2K iteration. Also the discriminator loss of generated samples reached 0.74 at the final stage of training. The proposed framework can be used as an effective procedural texture synthesis framework for video game design and development.