Collaborative Research: Reducing Student Resistance to Active Learning: Applying Research Results to Faculty Development

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This collaborative project involved investigators at the University of Michigan (Award DUE-1821488), Bucknell University (Award DUE-1821036), the University of Texas at Austin (Award DUE-1821092), and the University of Oregon (Award DUE-1821277). Replacing lectures with "active learning" in college and university STEM classrooms is a proven means of increasing students' understanding of concepts and their persistence in STEM studies. Yet it remains a challenge to spread active learning approaches widely because both faculty members and students tend to resist change in their habits of teaching and learning. This project focuses on student resistance as a barrier to the adoption of evidence-based teaching practices such as active learning. Student resistance is one of the most actionable and least studied barriers to STEM instructional change. The investigators' prior research, which focused primarily on engineering education, identified strategies that instructors can use to reduce student resistance to active learning. In this project, they will design and test a workshop to educate instructors in different STEM disciplines about using strategies to reduce student resistance. They will conduct research studies to examine how student resistance influences instructors' plans to use active learning in future classes, and to test whether their previous findings apply to other institutions and student populations.Through this effort, at least 90 STEM instructors, representing a broad set of two-year and four-year institutions with diverse student populations, will be equipped to use evidence-based strategies to reduce student resistance to active learning. The changes in their attitudes and practices will be studied to understand the effect of this professional development on student resistance and on the sustained adoption of active learning. The investigators' primary research questions are: (1) To what degree does the carefully designed faculty development workshop promote the use of explanation and facilitation strategies to reduce resistance? (2) To what extent does instructor motivation (i.e., self-efficacy and value) for adopting active learning moderate the effect of the workshop on instructors' behavior? To what extent do other course-level and institution-level variables moderate the effect of the workshop on instructors' behavior? (3) What is the effect of instructors' use of strategies to reduce student resistance on student affective response and on student resistance to active learning? To what extent does student resistance vary with the individual instructor's experience using active learning? (4) Does student affective response mediate the effect of instructor use of strategies on resistance? (5) To what extent does student resistance to active learning influence instructors' plans to continue using active learning in future course offerings? The investigators intend to disseminate the materials and results from this project via publications in scientific and science education journals, and presentations at science education and professional development conferences that reach a large number of STEM faculty members.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.