Abstract:

The Old Westbury Neuroscience International Program (OWNIP) is an NIH funded program that provides research opportunities to undergraduate students. The aim of the program is to encourage underrepresented minority students to pursue research careers in science. Students participating in the program are exposed to a ten-week summer research experience in one of five different collaborating foreign sites. Participants are assigned a research project in the area of expertise of the foreign research mentor. While foreign mentors are in charge of the research training abroad, students’ progress throughout the ten weeks is assessed from the program’s home institution using an LMS, i.e. Angel, in coordination with the foreign mentors. In the past, students’ performance in the program was assessed based on a final research report and a mentor’s evaluation survey. This past summer a new performance assessment plan was implemented based on a developmental rubric with three basic criteria, content knowledge, quantitative reasoning and multiple representations. The rubric has five achievement levels for each criterion reflecting the development of a student from its freshman year (level 1 to 1.5) to the senior level (level 3), master’s level (level 4) and PhD (level 5). For instance a student at level 2 is able to paraphrase and/or provide basic explanations to a problem or question, is able to identify information presented in two or more different ways and can demonstrate proper unit work and stepwise processing during problem solving. The same student at level 3 is able to apply known concepts to the solving of a new problem or research questions while incorporating data provided in graphs or tables and quantitative reasoning. Students entering the OWNIP are assumed to be able to perform at levels 2.5 to 3 and our goal is to move them to level 3 to 3.5. Last summer these three criteria were applied to the scoring of three assessment instruments: an annotated bibliography, including ten research articles related to the topic of their research, a research report, including three drafts and a final, and an oral presentation. Students could access the scoring rubric prior to the online submission of the assignment. Based on the first draft of the research report students entered the program on average at a level 2.6 ± 0.27. At the end of the summer students achieved on average a 3.5 ± 0.22 level in the final research report. Their performance on the annotated bibliography was slightly lower at the entry level, 2.4 ± 0.24 while achieving a level 3 ± 0.48 by the end of the summer. This data supports the use of a hybrid online model together with a well-prescribed developmental rubric for the assessment of student progress in a short-term international research experience. It also validates this approach for the purpose of program assessment of short-term objectives. This program is funded through a Minority Health Disparities International Research Training (MHIRT) grant#T37MD001429.