Organizing an undergraduate research group: Graduate Mentoring, Scaffolding, and Wikis

In this talk I will describe how my group manages a large number of undergraduates engaged in meaningful research projects. The interaction is very structured and includes considerable scaffolding to ensure student success. The undergraduates are organized into groups with specified research foci, and a graduate student assigned to each group as a mentor. Groups meet regularly on several levels, leading to a weekly whole group meeting. The structure fosters positive interdependence as well as individual responsibility as students are assigned individual projects with the research focus of the group. The use of a wiki is critical to facilitating the interaction, maintaining a record of progress, centralizing shared resources, and it allows for significant asynchronous interaction. This structure leads to student success, professional growth for graduate students, and a manageable time budget for the group leader.