ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1593436
Expanding the CURE: The Impact of Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences Across Natural and Social Sciences
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of La Verne, La Verne, United States
- 2California State University, San Bernardino, San Bernardino, California, United States
- 3Moreno Valley College, Moreno Valley, California, United States
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Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are high-impact learning practices that replace the traditional apprenticeship model and can increase learning gains in diverse groups. We examined CUREs across disciplines (including the social and natural sciences) to evaluate performance at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. We administered five instruments, including the CURE Survey of Course Elements, CURE Survey of Opinions, Experimental Design Ability Tool/Expanded Experimental Design Ability Tool, Career Adapt-Abilities Scale, and a demographic questionnaire. Wilcoxon Rank tests, Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests, and unpaired t-tests evaluated the efficacy of CUREs across students and within (and between) discipline type (social or natural science). Significant positive learning gains were experienced for select instrument items, but not for career-ready skills. Natural science students displayed significant positive changes for three scientific practice skills, whereas social sciences students had greater positive changes for a different set of three scientific practice skills. Overall, CUREs positively impacted student skills and self-perceptions.
Keywords: Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), equitable research experiences, High Impact Practices (HIPs), student learning, scientific practice skills, Research Design, student self perceptions, Perceptions of science
Received: 14 Mar 2025; Accepted: 11 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Preisler, Broussard, Gough Courtney, Dunn and Godde. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Vanessa Preisler, University of La Verne, La Verne, United States
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