Research experience and training for undergraduate students in developing countries: The case for one-week workshops.

Abstract:

The literature on research experiences for undergraduate students seems to suggest that early participation in research activities promotes their identity as researchers and increase the likelihood of going into graduate school. Unfortunately, the training in research practices and tools is often overlooked during the first years. Furthermore, colleges in developing countries often show a very hierarchical structure, making it difficult for students to approach professors and researchers before the last years of instruction. "Clubes de Ciencia" is an initiative that tries to remedy this problem, organizing one-week training events that not only bring together students from developing countries with researchers from all around the world but focus on developing practices to get them initiated in research. These short interventions are cost-effective, and with the increasing quality of remote communication services, they are now an optimal approach to increase STEM participation from students of diverse backgrounds.

In this presentation, we will describe the pedagogical strategies for one of these workshops. Although the academic topics covered were related to space physics and scientific computing, we emphasize the use of standard research tools and practices like LaTex, paper reviews, hypothesis testing, etc. We followed a "flipped-classroom" paradigm for the main structure, as well as a combination of several strategies (peer-tutoring, mindset interventions, etc) for the workshop activities. Finally, we used a statistical proxy for the big five personality traits to use it for the organization of the student groups.