First-Year Students as Scholars

佩珀丁大学获得了NSF改善本科生STEM教育：教育和人力资源设计与开发级别奖项，以将已被证明促进学生成功的高影响力教学实践整合到一系列第一年的研讨会中。在与西班牙裔服务机构惠蒂尔学院的同事合作下，PI团队建议将真实的生物学学术研究整合到传统的一年级研讨会中，从而激励并将入门课程转化为一年级学生学者计划(SAS-Program)。通过这种新颖的方法，生物专业的学生将在他们的第一个大学学期里从事真实的研究。在Pepperdine，这些学生中的一部分将申请并获得一个活跃的研究实验室的学徒职位。这将为这些学生在接下来的夏天完全沉浸在研究中做好准备，之后他们将担任下一批生物专业一年级学生的学生导师。参与本科生研究和参加第一年的研讨会都被确定为高影响力的做法，并被确定为改善STEM学生中代表性不足或高危人群的留住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。这一经历不仅有助于引导高中毕业生走向成功的大学生活，减少关键过渡期间的焦虑，还将激励同时进行的入门课程中学到的基本原理，如化学、生物、统计学和物理。该项目将使用混合方法来调查学生的学习情况，并引发学生对课程设计和实施的看法，以及这些观点如何随着时间的推移而变化。此外，教师导师将使用Erbe的调查工具评估第一年研讨会的学习目标(Erbes，2008；Carr等人)。2013)。这将允许与以前的结果进行纵向比较，并将重点放在“与教师共同创造知识”中实施科学方法所需的技能上(Chopp 2014)。需要观察的学生行为包括：完成初步文献回顾，找出知识差距，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增强本科生STEM教育企业对在一年级研讨会中整合真实研究的最有效做法的一般知识。该项目由生物科学局、生物基础设施司和教育和人力资源局联合资助。本科教育司支持应对本科教育愿景和变革中提出的挑战的努力：行动呼吁http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/.

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/.