Use of a Creative Problem Solving (CPS) Approach in a Senior Thesis Course to Advance Undergraduate Publications

摘要

We outline a creativity-based course model for supervising and promoting undergraduate researchat a small liberal arts college of about 1,600 undergraduate students, with no graduate offerings.This approach could easily be modified and implemented at weekly brownbag or joint laboratorymeetings at similar and larger types of schools. At our institution this course is required ofall psychology research thesis students (on average 8 per year) and requires the cooperation ofthe students, their thesis supervisors, and the course instructor. In part because of this course,during the past 20 years, our department faculty have published a total of 47 publications withundergraduates in peer-reviewed outlets such as Personality and Individual Differences, Psychologyof Music, Psychology of Women Quarterly, and Sex Roles. Importantly, according to PsycINFO,these undergraduate-generated publications have garnered more than 500 citations, attesting to theimpact that undergraduate research can have on the larger field in terms of knowledge generation.In addition to impactful peer-reviewed publications, our undergraduate students have presented163 posters at national conferences such as the Association for Psychological Science, Society forPersonality and Social Psychology, Society for Neuroscience, and Psychonomic Society. Below weoutline how our senior thesis course stimulates the creative dissemination of knowledge that isrequired during the publication process.