Laura Lukes

Assistant Professor

Research Interests

Geoscience Education Research (Discipline-Based Education Research)
Self-regulated Learning
field-based experiential learning
learning in informal settings (e.g., museums, parks, science centers)
crowdsourced and citizen science
teacher beliefs
motivation, emotion, and beliefs in learning
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in STEM
learning engineering

Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs

Research Options

I am available and interested in collaborations (e.g. clusters, grants).
I am interested in and conduct interdisciplinary research.
I am interested in working with undergraduate students on research projects.
 
 

Research Methodology

qualitative methods
Mixed methods

Recruitment

Master's students
Doctoral students
Postdoctoral Fellows
Any time / year round
2022
2023
I support public scholarship, e.g. through the Public Scholars Initiative, and am available to supervise students and Postdocs interested in collaborating with external partners as part of their research.
I support experiential learning experiences, such as internships and work placements, for my graduate students and Postdocs.
I am interested in hiring Co-op students for research placements.
I am interested in supervising students to conduct interdisciplinary research.

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ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS

These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.

Graduate Student Supervision

Master's Student Supervision

Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.

Geologic Time: Exploring Postsecondary Students' Knowledge and Museum Visitors' Patterns of Engagement (2024)

Geologic time has been identified as a threshold concept in geoscience (Teed and Slattery 2011) for those who are pursuing careers in geoscience. It is such an intricate concept that has remained challenging to communicate in formal learning environments for a long time, let alone in informal learning environments. There is limited research on how people conceptualize and learn geologic time (Ryker et al. 2018). The use of validated instruments to assess student understanding of geologic time has been a common practice among researchers and practitioners. However, it remains a question whether those questions in the validated instruments are capable enough in reporting students’ knowledge. Therefore, a mixed-methods study was conducted on undergraduate students. The results showed that while most students knew the relative order and spacing of events in Earth’s history, it was difficult for them to provide absolute ages for those events or provide dates that aligned with the relative spacing of the Earth history timeline figure they chose. Students were especially confused about the absolute ages of more recent events– the disappearance of dinosaurs and the appearance of humans. Now in informal learning environments, it was more important to check whether visitors engage with a digital geologic time exhibit, and if they do, then whether there is any evidence of cognitive and affective engagement in their behaviors. A mixed-methods study was conducted to get an account of visitor engagement patterns with a digital geologic time exhibit in Beaty Biodiversity Museum. The results reveal that people did interact with the exhibit, but duration of interaction was mostly less than one minute. Visitors in groups tended to interact with exhibit more than individual visitors, and those groups typically consisted of adults and kids who seemed like family/friend groups. There was also evidence of cognitive (e.g., curiosity) and affective (e.g., enjoyment) engagement among those who interacted suggesting that digital exhibits can initiate situational interest among visitors in informal learning environments. Insights from both studies lay the groundwork for developing new tools (e.g., pre/post-test instrument and interview protocol) to assess people’s learning about geologic time for formal and informal learning environments.

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