COEX courses engage groups of students in addressing a research question or knowledge gap of interest to scholarly communities. These courses make research and scholarly experiences more inclusive and accessible and are designed to complement the traditional model of 1:1 faculty-student mentorships or independent studies.
Typically, a COEX course would intentionally be designed to include these five learning experiences or outcomes:
- Research practices authentic to the discipline. This may include asking questions, using the tools of the discipline for gathering and analyzing data and developing and critiquing interpretations and arguments.
- Discovery or exploration of ill-structured questions where the outcome is not known to the students nor the instructor, and there is the potential for generating new knowledge or insights
- Creating work that has potential impact beyond the classroom. Examples include producing reports for an outside organization, achieving authorship or acknowledgement in a potential publication or creating blogs or podcasts distributed beyond the classroom.
- Collaboration, such as group work, giving and receiving peer feedback, pooling data and sharing interpretations.
- Iteration, or processes of revision, learning from failure and acknowledging and building on other students’ work.