TABLE 4.
ALURE and LEAPS student perceptions of authenticity
| ALURE (94 sources, 53 uses of stem words) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Stem word (instances) | Concept of authenticity categories | Counta |
| Real (41) | Gaining some sense of what research is like | 15 |
| Not like other practical classes/LEAPS | 6 | |
| Insight into being in a real/professional laboratory setting or career | 6 | |
| Participation in a “real” project | 5 | |
| Contributing to research | 4 | |
| Applied theory to “real” context | 3 | |
| ALURE design mimics “real-life” | 2 | |
| Actual(ly) (9) | “Contribution to science” and “meaningful results” | 3 |
| Understanding of what working as a researcher/in a laboratory is like | 2 | |
| Doing research/working on “actual” project | 2 | |
| Actual research means unknown results | 1 | |
| “Doing something” | 1 | |
| Authentic (3) | Being in a laboratory; doing research | 2 |
| The environment (was) | 1 | |
| LEAPS (510 sources, 71 uses of stem words) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Real (48) | Techniques and experiments apply to/mimic those of real labs and research | 13 |
| The experimental series (longitudinal design) mimicked real-life/a laboratory | 9 | |
| A sense of what working in a laboratory or environment is like | 8 | |
| Real-world context for course theory/content | 7 | |
| Experiencing and using real experiments or equipment | 6 | |
| Gained a greater sense of what research is like | 5 | |
| Actual(ly) (21) | Doing “actual” practical work | 8 |
| Understanding of how research is done | 4 | |
| Understanding what “laboratory work is like” | 4 | |
| Applying theory in practice | 5 | |
| Genuine (2) | “Laboratory work” | 1 |
| “Idea of real-world research” | 1 | |
aThe number of total references is calculated by Nvivo; some individual students use the query word multiple times in their reflection, so the count does not always reflect the number of students who used the word. The trees for “actual” and “actually” have been combined in both streams, due to their small size and shared stem. The table summarizes the results from Figures 1 and 2 and the other word trees that are not shown.