Elon College decided that the student role is central. Elon recently funded four teams to study intellectual engagement in the classroom. Each team consists of a professor and two student associates. The biology team is designing and studying relevant, inquiry-based course and laboratory components of a course for nonmajors. The environmental studies and economics team is training students in diverse fields to be expert resource persons in a simulation used in the school's Global Experiences course and will examine the results of the practice.
Reflective integration is the focus of a three-discipline team examining a set of linked courses.
Students bring to all the teams experience and knowledge that only learners newer in the discipline than the faculty member can bring. Done well, undergraduate research is a form of active learning that contributes to deep understanding. In most disciplines, faculty have to this point conducted research with undergraduates that includes the students doing ongoing laboratory work, helping to check sources for a book project, or being part of fieldwork. Few faculty have considered the rich possibilities of undergraduate research in teaching and learning. This kind of research has the powerful advantage of creating new knowledge for the discipline while enabling student researchers to become more aware of their own process of learning and the circumstances under which they can best learn within a discipline that views the world through a particular set of lenses and warrants and analyzes evidence in particular ways.