BRAID: Bridging the Disciplines with Authentic Inquiry & Discourse

跨学科（99）正在进行一项纵向研究，以确定在大一期间参加BRAID课程（科学与非科学交织课程）的学生是否会表现出更好的科学实验设计技能和更好的内容知识，这些知识将持续到后续的高级课程中。致力于研究自然科学及其对社会影响的住宿学习社区的学生有机会参加BRAID课程，这些课程明确地将生物学和化学的课堂和实验部分相互联系起来，并将其与数学、历史、哲学和科学社会学联系起来。学生们住在一栋楼里，里面有科学设施，包括教室和实验室，教师办公室以及行政和学术支持办公室。在整个新生队列中，大约625名学生选择参加全部、不参加或部分BRAID课程。因此，创建了三个队列；一组作为对照组，两组产生“剂量”变量。以往关于改革后的教学实践对传统课程后期表现影响的纵向研究有限。先前的研究结果表明，与参加相应传统入门课程的同龄人相比，参加改革后的入门课程的学生在整个本科学习中获得的学习收益增加。该项目由一个经验丰富的多学科小组进行，有可能对了解大学生如何学习作出重大贡献，并为制定综合课程铺平道路。在这个越来越多的大学采用生活学习社区模式的时代，这项研究具有特殊的意义。

Interdisciplinary (99) A longitudinal study is being conducted to determine if students enrolled in BRAID courses (interwoven science and non-science courses) during their freshman year will show improved scientific experimental design skills and improved content knowledge that persists into subsequent upper level courses. Students in a residential learning community devoted to studying the natural sciences and their impact on society are being given the opportunity to enroll in BRAID courses that explicitly tie lecture and laboratory portions of biology and chemistry with each other and to mathematics and history, philosophy and sociology of science.The students are living in a building that houses science facilities including both classrooms and laboratories, faculty offices and both administrative and academic support offices. Students in the entire freshmen cohort of approximately 625 chose to participate in all, none or some of the BRAID courses. Thus, three cohorts are created; one that will serve as a control group and two that give rise to a "dosage" variable. Prior longitudinal research on the influence of reformed teaching practices on later performance in traditional courses is limited. Previous findings suggest that students participating in a reformed introductory course experience increasing learning gains as they continue throughout their undergraduate studies as compared to peers enrolled in the corresponding traditional introductory course.The project, being conducted by an experienced multidisciplinary team, has the potential to make a major contribution to the understanding of how undergraduates learn and to pave the way for the development of integrated curricula. The study has particular relevance during this time of increasing adoption by colleges of the living-learning community model.