Learning by Doing: Mentoring Group-Based Undergraduate Research Projects in an Upper-Level Political Science Course

Abstract

Undergraduate research (UGR) is a "high-impact practice" that has been consistently shown to effectively promote desirable student-learning outcomes (SLOs) including critical thinking, logic, written and oral communication, problem solving, and interpretation of evidence, especially among minority and disadvantaged students. Mentoring quality UGR experiences in regular upper-level political science courses, however, is a difficult and time-consuming activity. This article describes an attempt to provide an intensive, semester-long, and group-based UGR experience in an upper-level American politics course. It discusses how this experience was designed to deliberately foster specific institutional UGR SLOs and summarizes student perceptions of the overall effectiveness of the experience.