Undergraduate research goes digital: using open educational resources to develop teaching and research on the directed community model

Chiara Ambrosio and Catherine Jackson

Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College, London

Start date: April 2011

How should students learn to do research? Chang and Jackson (2007) have shown that a diachronic directed undergraduate research community can produce research of publishable scholarly quality. This project builds directly on their radical innovations in teaching, learning and assessment in ways that demonstrate its replicability and improve its applicability and feasibility. Our proposal combines the use of open educational resources with improved methods for publishing our students’ work, developments which will improve dissemination and enhance student experience. We will publish two tranches of digitally published student work – our Virtual Nicholson’s Journal and Studies in the History of Electricity – which will act as widely accessible, online flagships for these important pedagogical innovations and lay the ground work for potential inter-departmental and inter-institutional collaboration.