An intensive primary-literature-based teaching program directly benefits undergraduate science majors and facilitates their transition to doctoral programs
Open accessAbstract
UCLA's Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research Program (HHURP), a collaboration between the College of Letters and Science and the School of Medicine, trains a group of highly motivated undergraduates through mentored research enhanced by a rigorous seminar course. The course is centered on the presentation and critical analysis of scientific journal articles as well as the students' own research. This article describes the components and objectives of the HHURP and discusses the results of three program assessments: annual student evaluations, interviews with UCLA professors who served as research advisors for HHURP scholars, and a survey of program alumni. Students indicate that the program increased their ability to read and present primary scientific research and to present their own research and enhanced their research experience at UCLA. After graduating, they find their involvement in the HHURP helped them in securing admission to the graduate program of their choice and provided them with an advantage over their peers in the interactive seminars that are the foundation of graduate education. On the basis of the assessment of the program from 1998-1999 to 2004-2005, we conclude that an intensive literature-based training program increases student confidence and scientific literacy during their undergraduate years and facilitates their transition to postgraduate study.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Small group journal clubs, with dedicated academic mentors, were shown to increase both scientific literacy and confidence in communicating scientifically with academic colleagues, ultimately facilitating transition to postgraduate study.
“Small group journal clubs, with dedicated academic mentors, were shown to increase both scientific literacy and confidence in communicating scientifically with academic colleagues, ultimately facilitating transition to postgraduate study [16].”
From Perceptions of scientific research literature and strategies for reading papers depend on academic career stage (2017) · cites this paper as [16]
A variety of teaching strategies for introducing papers to undergraduate students have been described, many of which have been demonstrated to increase student confidence and skill in the use of research literature.
“A variety of teaching strategies for introducing papers undergraduate students have been described, many of which have been demonstrated to increase student confidence and skill in the use of research literature [6,11,15,16,30–32].”
From Perceptions of scientific research literature and strategies for reading papers depend on academic career stage (2017) · cites this paper as [16]
Benefits of reading PSL can persist in the long term, with students demonstrating improved scientific process skills and academic advantages in subsequent courses.
“These benefits can persist in the long term, with students demonstrating improved scientific process skills and academic advantages in subsequent courses (Kozeracki et al., 2006; Sato et al., 2014).”
From Reading Primary Scientific Literature: Approaches for Teaching Students in the Undergraduate STEM Classroom (2023) · cites this paper as Kozeracki et al., 2006
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 10 · Cited by 124
- Authors
- Kozeracki, C. A., Carey, M. F., Colicelli, J., & Levis-Fitzgerald, M.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- *Office of Undergraduate Evaluation and Research, College of Letters and Science, University of California-Los Angeles; and
- ORCID
- Carey, Michael F.
- Venue
- CBE—Life Sciences Education
- Published
- 2006-12
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 340-347
- ISSN
- 1931-7913 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC1681356
- OpenAlex
- W2144901291
- Cited by
- 124
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 4
- FWCI
- 7.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- CBE—Life Sciences Education (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Science Education and Pedagogy
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Health and Medical Research Impacts
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Doctoral Education Challenges and Solutions
- Keywords
- undergraduate research mentoring, transition to graduate school, scientific literacy, program evaluation, student self-confidence, postgraduate admission, undergraduate science education
- MeSH terms
- California, Career Choice, Education, Graduate, Educational Measurement, Humans, Science, Students, Teaching, Universities, Program Evaluation
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
