Mentor(s): Ellen Yezierski, Ph.D.

Undergraduate students join the YRG research group without any background information on chemistry education research (CER). Because CER students don’t have any prior experience, they go through an onboarding process that consists of reading research papers on chemistry education, taking a quiz to ensure undergraduate researchers understand the information, and completing a paper activity to demonstrate application of content from the papers. Students also complete reflections on their progress as they continue through their onboarding experience. Students meet with the lab mentor, Dr. Yezierski, to discuss their new findings and observations. In these meetings, they are guided to ask themselves questions to dig deeper into the importance of chemistry education research.The onboarding experience was designed to help a novice learn what questions they need to ask themselves when researching. This poster shows the learning outcomes that result from a structured onboarding experience to support preparation for engaging in chemistry education research and how an onboarding experience focused on chemistry learning influences an emerging researcher’s ideas about chemistry learning. Findings have implications for the efficacy of the onboarding experience and its ability to prepare emerging researchers to participate in data collection and analysis with other undergraduate students engaged in chemistry education research.

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