Modelling the realities of research experience: collaboration against common and merciless foes

This paper describes a fourth-year undergraduate thesis-research course, the form of which has been changed in recent years to maximise the simulation aspect of under- graduate learning. It is suggested that both the "grudging slave"and "unconstrained- scientific-genius" are ineffective models of genuine research activity, and that an "adversary" model is more appropriate. The adversary model system uses a journal- submission analogue in which external judgement (the first "foe") is provided by having the thesis marked not by the supervisor but by other faculty in a complex, not perfect, but apparently fair, grading system. The other "foe" of the student is the deadline for submission of the thesis, a deadline which is rigidly enforced by means of very severe grade penalties for lateness. Responsibility for the thesis is thereby shifted completely to the student who, while contending against these "foes", is also engaged in a number of academically significant collaborative relationships. These relationships include that with the supervisor, with fellow students (in research seminars), and with the thesis co-ordinator, who has negligible influence on the final grade assigned, and can therefore function as a non-authoritarian, disinterested critic. Experience with this adversary model system has shown that it is necessary to provide "symbols of significance" for each component (e.g., the research seminar) of the course, in the form of (small) grades. The function of these grades is to ensure that each component is perceived by students as academically significant. The system inevitably produces sources of tension between the student, supervisor, other students, and co-ordinator. However, it is suggested that this feature is potentially beneficial inasmuch as it produces better simulation of real-life research experience, as well as increasing the student's sense of intellectual responsibility for his own work. Finally, the general applicability of the Toronto experience is discussed. It appears that such factors as departmental size, or research eminence of the faculty, are not critical for successful implementation. What is necessary is a general agreement on what constitutes good and bad research, and a commitment to disinterested enquiry and academic values by a sizeable majority of the faculty of the department in question.