URSA is proud to share a vignette published in the Council for Undergraduate Research Fall, 2020, vol 4,  CUR’s scholarly journal, Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research. The piece titled: Developing a Virtual Undergraduate Research Symposium in Response to COVID-19 Disruptions: Building a Canvas-Based Shared Platform and Pondering Lessons Learned, and was written in collaboration with Sophie Pierszalowski, Daniel López-Cevallos, Bethany Ulman, and Greg Heinonen. The vignette highlights how URSA transformed the spring, 2020 celebration of undergraduate excellence into a virtual showcase, and the resulting unexpected challenges and affordances.

“For all of us, the transition from in-person to remote student programming was extremely abrupt. We were all affected in different ways. One of the biggest, and most immediate, challenges for the Office of URSA was translating our spring term showcase of undergraduate research, Celebrating Undergraduate Excellence (CUE), into a virtual showcase. While the learning curve was steep, we were very fortunate to have the support of Bethany Ulman, Ecampus Student Success Coach, who developed a Canvas-based platform for us to host the event in. Since this event occurred, several other units across campus have borrowed the model we developed for CUE. It has been very exciting to see all the different ways this platform has been used across campus. Hopefully, this publication will allow those at other institutions to learn from our design, and the associated challenges and affordances,” Sophie Pierszalowski, Associate Director of Undergraduate Research, Office of URSA.

“This article highlights our efforts in adapting undergraduate research to the challenges brought up by the pandemic, and continue to provide transformation educational experiences that are accessible for all learners. We hope it is useful for other undergraduate research programs across the country,” commented Daniel Lopez-Cevallos, Ph.D., Assistant Vice Provost, Undergrad Education.

Follow this link to visit the canvas site: 2020 Undergraduate Showcase of Research and Creative work, Celebrating Undergraduate Excellence.

More information concerning URSA, can be found here.

 

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