Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences Spanning Two Semesters of Biology Impact Student Self-Efficacy but not Future Goals

Course-based undergraduate research is promoted as an equitable strategy for providing the benefits of research experiences to a larger, more diverse population of students pursuing science degrees. Here, we report the impacts of course-based research on the self-efficacy and future goals of students enrolled in introductory biology courses at a minority-serving comprehensive teaching university. These courses are part of a department-wide effort to redesign and coordinate 10 laboratory courses to include embedded research projects addressing a common scientific problem. Pre- and postsurveys eval-uating self-efficacy of laboratory skills and future academic and career goals were administered to students enrolled in two iterations of two redesigned introductory biology courses. Findings include increases in self-efficacy related to experimental design, communication/collaboration, and scientific literacy in the first course, but only scientific literacy in the second course. Very few disparities in self-efficacy were found postcourse for students of varying demographics, despite several precourse differences, while future academic and career plans remained largely unaltered. This study, represent-ing the first thorough analysis of our department’s redesigned courses, is informing curricular improvements to the introductory labs and providing data for a longitudinal study of the impact of the entire program.