CHALLENGE EPISODES AND COPING STRATEGIES IN UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING RESEARCH

Paper in proceeding, 2021

Higher education institutions are increasingly placing importance on engaging undergraduate students in genuine research, known as undergraduate research experiences (UREs). While the professional and personal benefits that result from UREs have been theorized and researched, the potential challenges students experience when engaging in genuine research remain relatively underexplored. Drawing on a sociocultural understanding of learning, this paper details challenge episodes and coping strategies that engineering students at master level reported while carrying out a research project in biomedical engineering. Data consisted of reflective writing collected at the beginning, middle, and end of the research project. A thematic analysis of the data led to the identification of three overarching areas of challenges: (1) organizing, planning, and executing tasks; (2) managing the group and its members; and (3) receiving support from the teachers. We find that while groups often experienced similar challenges, the coping strategies they employed differed and were influenced by the groups’ disciplinary composition and the students’ previous project experiences. We nuance the discourse around the role of challenges in UREs by making the distinction between “desirable challenges” and “undesirable challenges”, and we draw out implications for teachers wishing to involve students in realistic research.