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

这是一项由三个机构合作提出的建议，这三个机构已经实施机构转型赠款至少三年。(这些是向承诺开始增加使用循证教学方法的机构提供的赠款。这些补助金通常用于支持专业发展活动和激励STEM教职员工改变他们的教学策略。此外，赠款活动是在关于系统性变化如何发生的一种或多种理论的背景下进行的。)其中两笔赠款来自较早的更广泛的方案(扩大循证改革的实施和示范)，一笔来自当前IUSE：EHR方案的体制转型轨道。这项建议包括从每一笔早期赠款中选出一名PI，目的是找到对这些机构有效的转型战略，这些战略的不同之处在于，教师参与以改进STEM教学为重点的地方和国家网络的程度不同，研究学生如何学习STEM的学者在机构中的存在，以及可用于促进更多使用循证教学实践的机构激励措施。这项研究将考察教学网络和研究网络之间的互动效应，特别是机构内的研究网络。这个项目将扩大我们对有效的制度变革模式的了解，并帮助其他机构努力鼓励循证教学。本项目的研究重点是STEM学院的合作和联合活动。它将审查STEM学院的成员如何在他们的教学和研究中相互专业地联系，无论是在机构内部还是在全国范围内。在其他方面，它将考察参与国家教学网络的重点是被证明有价值的特定教学方法如何增加参与者S对他们所联系的机构同事的影响力。更强大的网络的影响将通过网络进行检查？在低级STEM课程中，对教师个人、教学方法的选择以及学生成功的基本衡量标准的影响。该项目围绕社会网络分析的应用和本科生STEM课堂观察协议的使用而构建，事实证明，该协议相对容易实施。

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.