Collaborative Research: Impact of the Summer Institutes on Faculty Teaching and Student Achievement

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This collaborative project, designed to determine the outcomes of a long standing faculty development effort, includes four institutions, Yale University, the University of Colorado, Boulder, Cornell University, and the University of Connecticut. Over the last decade, the National Academies Summer Institutes (SIs) have trained almost 1,000 faculty and instructional staff in 'scientific teaching,' an approach to STEM instruction based on evidence about how people learn (1, 2). The SIs are designed to teach effective use of active learning and assessment with attention to fostering learning by diverse students. They feature an iterative approach to examining the learning associated with newly introduced teaching practices. At present few studies systematically examine the outcomes of faculty development efforts. This project is a Phase III assessment of the impact of the SI training on participants' teaching practices and their students' outcomes. It entails developing a general system for asking questions about the outcomes of faculty development efforts and using the SIs as a base for testing that system. Intellectual Merit: This project is an important large-scale assessment of scientific teaching practices and their impact on student outcomes. The project is unique because it employs a novel systems evaluation approach to design and applies measures for the adoption of teaching practices and student achievement. This work will create knowledge about educational practices, instructor behavior change, and student outcomes, while developing universal evaluation tools that will be widely disseminated to enable others to evaluate their education initiatives.Broader Impacts: The results from the study of the institutes will help inform future faculty development efforts. In addition, the resulting evaluation system will provide tools for designing and conducting evaluations of complex projects.1. J. Handelsman, S. Miller, C. Pfund, Scientific Teaching. (WH Freeman & Co, 2007).2. C. Pfund et al., Professional development. Summer institute to improve university science teaching. Science (New York, N.Y.) 324, 470 (2009).