New Zealand has an integrated but differentiated system of tertiary education, and within this, it is the universities that have a long tradition of research and research-informed teaching. The Tertiary Education Strategy emphasizes the role of faculty as researchers, and the need for internships and research of value to employers; in practice it supports a conventional model of students as research apprentices. Universities do not have offices dedicated to undergraduate research, service learning or community engagement to encourage student engagement in research projects shaped by undergraduates rather than their teachers. Nonetheless, good examples of student-driven practices are identified in a range of disciplines, including the humanities, engineering, ecology and geography. Examples are given at assignment, class and curriculum levels. An important component of these in New Zealand is an awareness of and some competency with respect to Māori culture, given the requirement in the national Education Act that institutions acknowledge the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, which is the country’s foundational constitutional document.

In many undergraduate psychology programs, students gain research experience through intentional scaffolded experiences throughout the undergraduate curriculum and in some cases by joining a faculty member’s research program outside of the classroom. In sustained undergraduate research experiences, students benefit from developmentally appropriate mentoring as they gradually develop and master skills, an approach often compared to an apprenticeship model. Many psychology faculty use evidence-based mentoring practices, such as the Salient Practices Framework, which was developed by an international, multi-institutional research team. Examples include setting clear and incremental expectations and supporting students as they transfer more basic skills learned in the classroom to conducting community or field-based research. There are creative and evidence-based ways to improve access for all students by being more intentional about embedding research experiences in the psychology curricula, or by further considering ways to recruit and retain UR students from historically underserved groups.

Future biologists require a profound understanding of leading biological concepts, mechanisms, methods, experimental design and data analysis on top of subject-specific expertise. Early and continued exposure to undergraduate research (UR) formats offers a central key to train the next generation of biologists, to drive student motivation and to facilitate early career decisions. UR formats can be classified at different pedagogical levels. At the highest level, students conduct their own independent research and create new knowledge. Course-based research experiences (CUREs) are suitable for larger groups and produce outcomes similar to research internships but require increased creativity on the side of faculty, depending on the respective framework and group size. To implement UR represents a challenge for faculty, as roles change from teaching toward mentoring, increasing the workload. Nevertheless, biology offers a wide variety of anchors for UR formats that are most suitable as an active learning element in biology education to balances pedagogical and research goals and increase student motivation.