Engaging Undergraduates with Research

Page published: 16 January 2012

BU’s Dr Heather Hartwell takes part in an online debate hosted by the Guardian Higher Education network.

Bournemouth University’s Associate Professor, Heather Hartwell, took part in a lively online debate on Friday, discussing how to engage undergraduates in research.

Hosted by the Guardian Higher Education network, Dr Hartwell joined panellists from the Universities of Leeds, Central Lancashire, East London and Lincoln among others, to provide expertise and advice on how to develop undergraduate research programmes and ensure they are successful.

Dr Hartwell explained BU’s ‘fusion’ concept, describing ‘a community where research is part of core business and where both undergraduates and post graduates are engaged in that activity so it becomes part of the ‘daily’ business’.

The British Conference for Undergraduate Research was widely considered by panel members to be an excellent initiative. This takes place at the University of Warwick in March, with ten BU students from the School of Tourism presenting posters.

Fellow panellists and participants in the web chat were also impressed by Dr Hartwell’s own experiences engaging undergraduates with research; notably her work with the US army. “We were awarded a contract by the US army to study food and emotions,” she said. “This was with the demographic of their ‘war fighters’, so young adults. During a first year lecture I asked for volunteers to help me, and the sea of hands was amazing. In fact recruiting students to help was beneficial because they were the same age group as the sample.”

But it’s not only the students who benefit from engaging with research. Dr Hartwell commented that sometimes dissertation data is of such high quality that she has been known to use it to form the basis of a short co-authored paper.

Inevitably the issue of peer ‘snobbery’ was raised, questioning the status of published undergraduate research. Dr Hartwell suggested that if ‘published work was blind peer reviewed and therefore the ‘process’ did not know where the work had come from - it was accepted on its merit’.

The full debate can be viewed via the Guardian Higher Education Network.