A growing number of publications offer tips for faculty, undergraduate research programs, and institutions about how to support undergraduate research (UR). The Council on Undergraduate Research’s (CUR) Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research, for example, identifies core features for successful undergraduate research…

In July 2015, Elon’s Center for Engaged Learning hosted a three-day think tank on residential learning communities that brought together a dozen scholars and practitioners (participants are listed below). Learning communities have been defined in a wide variety of ways…

Faculty mentors play a significant role in making undergraduate research (UR) a high-impact educational practice. Kuh and O’Donnell (2013) contend that the deepest engagement in UR occurs when students participate in all aspects of the research process in close working…

As a high-impact educational practice, undergraduate research (UR) can have significant impacts on student learning. UR can lead to better student retention and engagement (Kuh, 2008) and foster deep student learning of critical thinking, effective communication, and complex problem-solving, which…

Last week’s post provided an introduction to what the “habits and values and methods” of the Arts and Humanities look like when applied to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Extending that discussion, Stephen Bloch-Schulman (Elon University), Susan Conkling (Boston…

Although the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) crosses disciplines, one tension in SoTL centers around what counts as SoTL, particularly in terms of methods and methodologies. Although some SoTL questions may merit social science methods, as Pat Hutchings suggests, SoTL should draw…

In the 2012 Council on Undergraduate Research publication on Characteristics of Excellence in Undergraduate Research (COEUR), Roger S. Rowlett, Linda Blockus, and Susan Larson summarize best practices for supporting undergraduate research. Based on “a compilation of the experiences of CUR in…

When the Center for Engaged Learning releases calls for applications for our research seminars, we often field questions about how many people can apply from an institution and how the multi-institutional research seminars support institutional research. Many applicants are the…

The 2011-2013 Elon University Research Seminar on Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer supported multi-institutional research by 45 scholars and resulted in an impressive (and still growing) list of conference presentations and publications. Writing across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and…

Writing-Intensive Courses – one of the high-impact practices identified by George Kuh (2008; see also AAC&U’s High-Impact Educational Practices) – can and should be attentive to the evolving nature of writing. Writing in the 21st Century happens everywhere – offline…