First-Year Students as Scholars

佩珀代因大学获得了美国国家科学基金会“改善本科STEM教育：教育和人力资源设计与发展”奖，以将高影响力的教学实践整合到一套第一年的研讨会中，这些实践已被证明可以促进学生的成功。通过与惠蒂尔学院（一个西班牙裔服务机构）的同事合作，PI团队建议将生物学的真正学术研究整合到传统的一年级研讨会中，从而使入门课程充满活力并将其转变为一年级学生学者计划（SAS-Program）。通过这种新颖的方法，生物学专业的学生将在他们的第一个学期就从事真正的研究。在佩珀代因大学，这些学生中的一部分将申请并在一个活跃的研究实验室接受学徒培训。这将使这些学生在接下来的夏天完全沉浸在研究中，之后他们将成为下一批一年级生物学专业学生的学生导师。参与本科研究和参加第一年的研讨会都被认为是高影响力的做法，并被确定为提高代表性不足或有风险的STEM学生群体的保留和表现的最有效方法之一。因此，该计划将使所有参与的学生受益，包括第一代学生、低收入学生和那些属于代表性不足群体的学生。第一年的研讨会将欢迎学生加入一个学术身份小组，从事将科学方法应用于现实世界问题的真实研究。这种经历不仅有助于高中毕业生走向成功的大学生活，减少在关键过渡时期的焦虑，而且还会激发在同时进行的入门课程中所学到的基本原理，如化学、生物、统计学和物理学。该项目将采用混合方法来调查学生的学习情况，并引出学生对课程设计和实施的看法，以及这些看法如何随着时间的推移而变化。此外，教师导师将使用Erbes的调查工具评估第一年研讨会的学习目标（Erbes 2008; Carr et al. 2013）。这将允许与以前的结果进行纵向比较，并关注在“与教师共同创造知识”中实施科学方法所需的技能（Chopp 2014）。要观察的学生行为的例子包括：完成初步文献综述的能力，识别知识空白，设计适当的实验来检验假设，采用适当的统计方法，解决意想不到的问题，解释实证结果等。该项目的评估结果将提高本科STEM教育企业在第一年研讨会中整合真实研究的最有效实践的一般知识。该项目由生物基础设施司生物科学司和教育和人力资源司本科教育司联合资助，以支持应对《本科教育的愿景与变革：行动呼吁》http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/所提出的挑战。

Pepperdine University has received an NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources Design and Development tier award to integrate high impact teaching practices that have been demonstrated to promote student success into a set of first-year seminars. In collaboration with colleagues at Whittier College, an Hispanic Serving Institution, the PI team proposes to integrate authentic scholarly research in biology into conventional first-year seminars, thereby invigorating and transforming introductory coursework into a First-Year Students as Scholars Program (SAS-Program). Through this novel approach, biology majors will be engaged in authentic research during their first college term. At Pepperdine, a subset of those students will apply for and receive an apprenticeship in an active research laboratory. This will prepare those students for total immersion in research the following summer, after which they will serve as student mentors to the next cohort of first-year biology majors. Both engagement in undergraduate research and participation in first-year seminars have been identified as high impact practices and established as one of the most effective approaches to improving the retention and performance of underrepresented or at-risk populations of STEM students. Thus, the program will benefit all students involved, including first-generation, low-income students and those belonging to underrepresented groups. The first-year seminars will welcome students into a scholarly identity group, engaged in authentic research that applies the scientific method to real world problems. This experience not only will serve to orient high school graduates to successful college life, reducing anxiety during a pivotal transition, but also will invigorate the basic principles being learned in concurrent introductory courses, such as chemistry, biology, statistics, and physics. The project will use a mixed-methods approach both to investigate how well students learned and to elicit student perspectives of the course design and implementation and how these perspectives change over time. In addition faculty-mentors will assess learning objectives of the first-year seminars using an Erbes' survey instrument (Erbes 2008; Carr et al. 2013). This will allow longitudinal comparisons with previous outcomes and focus on skills required to implement the scientific method in "co-creating knowledge with faculty" (Chopp 2014). Examples of student behaviors to be observed include the ability to: complete a primary literature review, identify gaps in knowledge, design appropriate experiments to test hypotheses, employ appropriate statistical methods, solve unanticipated problems, interpret empirical results, etc. The results of the project's evaluation will enhance the general knowledge within the undergraduate STEM education enterprise of the most effective practices for the integration of authentic research in a first-year seminar.This project is funded jointly by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education in support of efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Education: A Call to Action http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/.