依托重点实验室的本科生“科研课堂” 模式探索与实践——以北京航空航天大学“TOP 计划”为例

[Objective] Given the increasingly urgent demand for high-level innovative talents in China, the requirement for universities to strengthen the cultivation of these talents has become more explicit. To further strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration in science and education in universities, Beihang University has launched the Research Class program, building on its key laboratories. This program aims to quickly integrate recent scientific research laboratory achievements into teaching content, spark students’ interest in professional learning, enhance research guidance, and promote access to national and provincial key laboratories for undergraduate students. By fostering in-depth participation in scientific research practice, it aims to improve students’ practical innovation skills and support their early engagement with research projects, early access to laboratories, and early participation in research teams. [Methods] With “Research Tutors, Open Day, and Mini Projects” as the core, in which research tutors offer guidance, open days enable students to explore laboratory resources, and mini projects promote hands-on research, the curriculum mechanisms of the Research Class promote policy formulation through research in several areas. These include establishing a collaborative organizational mechanism for unifying efforts across departments, standardizing the curriculum design to align with academic goals, adopting flexible methods of course selection that consider student schedules, selecting cutting-edge research topics to keep content updated, strengthening quality supervision to ensure consistent teaching standards, formulating scientific assessment criteria, and enhancing incentives to boost participation. By adopting models such as “Pilot Implementation First, Then Promotion,” the Research Class has been gradually disseminated to all undergraduate students in the university, thus ultimately forming a distinctive new paradigm for talent cultivation through scientific research. [Results] Research Class for undergraduate students has become a crucial tool that Beihang University employs to deepen its reform of experimental teaching and construct a cultivation system for innovative talents. Its innovative features lie in using scientific research to inform teaching, breaking down disciplinary barriers, cultivating innovative thinking, and strengthening personalized cultivation paths. The Research Class has been operating regularly for three years; since then, remarkable achievements have been made: a total of 590 courses have been offered, while 100% of key laboratories at or above the provincial and ministerial levels have been opened to undergraduate students, covering sophomores and juniors. Meanwhile, the university’s key laboratories have been transformed into major teaching spaces for talent cultivation—ensuring that all high-end talents in laboratories contribute to instruction and promoting the transformation of 83% of scientific research achievements into teaching resources. In this manner, talent cultivation through scientific research is effectively maximized. [Conclusions] After several years of practice, relying on multidimensional and systematic reforms, including strengthening organizational collaboration, standardizing the curriculum system, integrating high-quality resources, and innovating operational mechanisms, the Research Class at Beihang University has effectively bridged the gap between scientific research and teaching. It has promoted the full opening of key laboratories to undergraduate students and realized the comprehensive transformation of scientific research resources into talent cultivation resources, thus achieving efficient empowerment. This initiative has yielded remarkable results across areas such as students’ participation in innovation and entrepreneurship competitions and the cultivation of their research capabilities, thereby offering a replicable and successful model for the integration of science and education in universities.