IUSE: Fostering Undergraduate Students' Disciplinary Learning and Water Literacy

本项目将支持本科生对核心水文概念以及与水相关问题的社会、文化、经济和政治层面有深入的了解。该项目将设计和研究一门新的跨学科本科课程，“社会中的水”，专为一年级学生（STEM专业和非专业）设计。项目工作将是跨学科的，从STEM教育、水文科学、社会和决策科学等领域汲取灵感，并将为人类-环境系统、STEM知情决策和科学素养等本科教学和学习的理论和研究做出贡献。该项目将影响未来的STEM劳动力，并培养未来选民和消费者的水素养。该项目将采用预先指定的、迭代的教学设计过程，以有效的中学后STEM教学原则和当代学习理论为基础，为课程的开发和持续改进提供信息。与该项目专注于教学设计背景下的早期探索性研究相一致，该项目将探索学生成绩、可塑因素以及中介或调节变量之间的关联，以阐明学生如何参与stem社会水文问题决策的潜在理论。该项目是对本科生科学学习学科化教育研究的直接回应。项目可交付成果将包括一个以研究为基础的跨学科水科学课程，以及整个项目期间课程实施研究的实证研究成果。

This project will support undergraduate students to develop robust understanding of core hydrological concepts, as well as the social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions of water-related issues. This project will design and study a new, interdisciplinary undergraduate course, Water in Society, designed for first year students (STEM majors and non-majors). Project work will be transdisciplinary, drawing from the fields of STEM education, hydrological sciences, and social and decision sciences, and will contribute to theory and research on undergraduate teaching and learning about human-environmental systems, STEM-informed decision-making, and science literacy. The project will impact the future STEM workforce, as well as cultivate water literacy in future voters and consumers.The project will utilize a pre-specified, iterative instructional design process to inform the development and ongoing refinement of a course grounded in tenets of effective post-secondary STEM instruction and contemporary learning theory. Consistent with the project's focus on early-stage, exploratory research in an instructional design context, the project will explore associations between student outcomes, malleable factors, and mediating or moderating variables to clarify underlying theory about how students engage in STEM-informed decision-making about socio-hydrological issues. The project is a direct response to calls for discipline-based educational research on undergraduate students' science learning. Project deliverables will include a research-based, interdisciplinary water science course and empirical research findings from study of course implementation throughout the project period.