Combining Teaching and Research through Barcode Experiments

Abstract

A core mission of university education is to train students' problem solving abilities, or in some cases, students' research skills. To achieve this, educators assign students certain experiment courses, where students complete a task following preset procedures. However, such courses often employ outdated teaching materials that are far from cutting-edge problems. Meanwhile, a preset experiment procedure cannot evoke students' innovations. In this article we introduce an experimental course we opened at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for junior-year students -- the Research-Oriented Course (ROC). ROC is based on a cutting-edge research project and includes an Introduction -- Demonstration -- Research -- Evaluation four-phase course as well as the T -- W -- R three-dimensional evaluation criteria. Evaluations showed that students finished their research tasks satisfactorily and they improved their research skills through this process.