Collaborative Research: Mapping Change in Higher Education-Social Networks and STEM Reforms

这是一项来自三个机构的合作提案，这些机构已经实施了至少三年的机构转型资助。(这些拨款是给那些承诺开始增加使用循证教学方法的机构的。赠款通常支持专业发展活动，并激励STEM教师改变其教学策略。此外，资助活动是在一个或多个关于系统变化如何发生的理论背景下进行的。)其中两笔赠款来自早期的WIDER项目（扩大循证改革的实施和示范），一笔赠款来自当前IUSE: EHR项目的制度转型项目。该提案包括来自这些早期赠款的一个PI，其目标是找到在这些机构有效的转型策略，这些策略在教师参与地方和国家网络的程度上有所不同，这些网络的重点是改进STEM教学，研究学生如何学习STEM的学者的机构存在，以及促进增加使用循证教学实践的制度激励。这项研究将检查教学网络和研究网络之间的相互作用，特别是机构内部的研究网络。这个项目将扩大我们对有效的制度变革模式的认识，并有助于其他机构鼓励循证教学的努力。在这个项目中进行的研究侧重于STEM学院的合作和联合活动。它将研究STEM学院的成员如何在机构内部和全国范围内在教学和研究中相互联系。除其他事项外，它将研究如何参与国家教学网络侧重于特定的教学方法证明价值增加参与者？对与他们建立联系的机构同事的影响。更强大的网络的影响将通过网络来检验。对教师个人选择教学方法的影响，以及对学生在低年级STEM课程中成功的基本衡量标准的影响。该项目是围绕社会网络分析的应用和本科STEM课堂观察协议的使用而构建的，该协议已被证明相对容易实现。

This is a collaborative proposal from three institutions that have been implementing institutional transformation grants for at least three years. (These are grants to institutions that have promised to embark on a process of increasing the use of evidence-based teaching methods. The grants typically support professional development activities and incentives for STEM faculty to change their teaching strategies. In addition, the grant activities are conducted in the context of one or more theories about how systemic change occurs.) Two of these grants were from the earlier WIDER Program (Widening the Implementation and Demonstration of Evidence-based Reforms) and one was from the Institutional Transformation track of the current IUSE: EHR Program. This proposal includes one PI from each of these earlier grants, with the goal of finding the transformation strategies that are effective at these institutions, which differ in the level of faculty participation in local and national networks focused on improved STEM teaching, the institutional presence of scholars who study how students learn STEM, and the institutional incentives available to promote increased use of evidence-based teaching practices. The research will examine interaction effects between teaching networks and research networks, particularly intra-institutional research networks. This project will broaden our knowledge of effective institutional change models and help efforts in other institutions to encourage evidence-based teaching. The research conducted in this project focuses on the cooperative and joint activities of the STEM faculties. It will examine how members of the STEM faculties associate with each other professionally in their teaching and their research, both within the institution and nationally. Among other things, it will examine how participation in national teaching networks focused on specific teaching methods of proven value increases the participant?s influence on institutional colleagues with whom they network. The impact of stronger networks will be examined though the networks? impact on individual faculty choices of teaching methods and on basic measures of student success in lower division STEM courses. The project is constructed around the application of social network analysis and use of the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM, which has proven relatively easy to implement.