First-Year Students as Scholars

佩珀代因大学已收到NSF改善本科STEM教育：教育和人力资源设计与开发等级奖，以整合已被证明能促进学生成功的高影响力教学实践到一系列第一年的研讨会。 在与惠蒂尔学院，西班牙裔服务机构的同事合作，PI团队建议将生物学的真实学术研究整合到传统的第一年研讨会，从而振兴和转化为一年级学生作为学者计划（SAS计划）的入门课程。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大学学期从事真实的研究。 在佩珀代因，这些学生的一个子集将申请并在一个活跃的研究实验室接受学徒。 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一年级生物学专业的学生导师。 参与本科生研究和参加第一年的研讨会都被认为是高影响力的做法，并被确立为提高STEM学生代表性不足或风险人群的保留和表现的最有效方法之一。因此，该方案将使所有参与的学生受益，包括第一代、低收入学生和属于代表性不足群体的学生。第一年的研讨会将欢迎学生进入一个学术身份组，从事真正的研究，将科学方法应用于真实的世界问题。这一经验不仅将有助于高中毕业生成功的大学生活，减少焦虑在一个关键的过渡，但也将振兴正在学习的基本原则，同时介绍课程，如化学，生物学，统计学和物理学。该项目将使用混合方法的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调查工具评估第一年研讨会的学习目标（Erbes 2008;卡尔等人2013）。这将允许与以前的成果进行纵向比较，并专注于实施科学方法所需的技能“与教师共同创造知识”（Chopp 2014）。要观察的学生行为示例包括以下能力：完成初步文献综述，确定知识差距，设计适当的实验来测试假设，采用适当的统计方法，解决意外问题，解释实证结果，该项目的评估结果将提高本科STEM教育企业内的最有效的做法，为一体化的一般知识该项目由生物基础设施部生物科学理事会和本科教育部教育和人力资源理事会共同资助，以支持应对本科教育中的愿景和变革所带来的挑战：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/.