Generative AI Expands the Intellectual Reach of Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs)
Artificial IntelligenceHuman-Computer Interaction
Summary
The authors studied how adding generative AI tools to college research classes helps students do science projects. They found that AI gave students personalized help, letting them create their own unique projects beyond what teachers could offer. AI also helped team members work better together by sharing knowledge, without removing any student's special skills. But students still had to check and decide if the AI's suggestions made sense, keeping their scientific judgment. Overall, the authors show that AI can support student research by expanding ideas, teamwork, and responsibility, while keeping true scientific thinking.
Authors
Aditi Babar, Kristin J. Davin, Alex Dornburg
Abstract
Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) broaden access to authentic scientific inquiry through responsive instructor support as research problems become increasingly complex. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) may extend this support by providing individualized assistance that can adapt as student needs change. However, how embedding GenAI within a CURE to provide support across the research process impacts student inquiry, collaboration, and scientific reasoning remains unresolved. Here we use longitudinal qualitative data collected across three semesters of a bioinformatics and genomics CURE to show that GenAI expanded the intellectual reach of the research experience in three distinct ways. First, personalized, on-demand scaffolding allowed students to move beyond the boundaries of instructor expertise and transform their own interests into researchable inquiry, with all teams developing distinct self-directed projects rather than selecting instructor-provided topics. Second, GenAI became part of the distributed cognitive system of research teams, helping novice researchers communicate and coordinate across differentiated expertise without eliminating specialization. Third, expanded capability did not replace the need for disciplinary judgment. Students increasingly validated, revised, or rejected AI-generated contributions, such that research independence emerged through retained intellectual responsibility. Together, these findings suggest that GenAI can extend the reach of CUREs by expanding what novice researchers can investigate, how they can collaborate, and the level of responsibility they can assume while preserving human judgment central to authentic scientific inquiry.