CURE Cookbook on One Page
Definition & Common Characteristics
CURE is an acronym for ‘Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience’. ÌýIt's a form of classroom-based course that offers students hands-on experience doing original research and offers faculty the opportunity to generate new information.
- CUREs offer opportunities for students to make discoveries that are of interest to stakeholders outside the classroom (e.g., the broader scientific community).
- Students' work is iterative, meaning that students must trouble-shoot, problem-solve, and repeat aspects of their work for the research to progress.
- CUREs offer opportunities for students to communicate their research results to those stakeholders.
- Just like in a faculty member's research group, the research in a CURE progresses as students work. This means that new research questions and directions are generated each term and the CURE is unlikely to look the same from year to year.
- Students may engage in a range of science practices such as collecting and analyzing data, building and defending arguments, and collaborating with one another and more experienced scientists. The work that students do in a CURE must build off and have the potential to contribute to a larger body of knowledge in the discipline.
Source:
CUREnet
CUREnet was established in 2012 to support networking among faculty developing, teaching, and assessing CUREs, to share CURE projects and resources, and to develop new tools and strategies for CURE instruction and assessment.Ìý
EvaluateUR-CURE
EvaluateUR-CURE provides an assessment of the value of CUREs by documenting student growth in critical academic and workforce-related knowledge and skills without placing a significant evaluation burden on students and mentors.
Ìý
Publications
Videos with Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØBoulder Experts
National CURE Programs
SEA-PHAGES (Science Education Alliance-Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science) is a two-semester, discovery-based undergraduate research course that begins with simple digging in the soil to find new viruses but progresses through a variety of microbiology techniques and eventually to complex genome annotation and bioinformatic analyses.
The Actinobacteriophage Database at PhagesDB.org is a website that collects and shares data, pictures, protocols, and analysis tools associated with the discovery, sequencing, and characterization of mycobacteriophages—viruses that infect the Mycobacteria and also other bacterial hosts in the phylum Actinobacteria.
Small World Initiative is a unique class approach that harnesses the power of active learning to achieve both educational and scientific goals. SWI is an innovative program that successfully encourages students to pursue careers in science through hands-on experience and real-world applicable laboratory and field research in introductory courses.