RCN-UBE: Networking STEM Initiatives To Enhance (NSITE) Adoption of Evidence-Based Practices

该项目将建立一个网络，使各国的STEM教育改革倡议能够联合起来，加快在中学后STEM教育中采用有效的教学做法，并提供对组织如何变化的更深层次的了解。目前，高校STEM教育工作者很少接受过正规的教学培训。因此，许多人的教学方式是采用被动的讲授方法，这导致进入大学时宣布STEM专业的学生，特别是那些来自代表性不足的群体的学生，保留率和成功率较低。因此，由此产生的STEM工作人员无法满足目前对这些专业人员的需求，也不代表它所服务的社会的多样性。在过去十年中，出现了许多解决这一问题的倡议，并在传播认识和一些解决办法方面取得了一些进展。虽然STEM教育正在发生变化，但步伐慢于不断变化的社会需求。这一新的网络将使现有的倡议能够分享有效的战略，并联合起来测试新的战略，以提高STEM教育改革的进展速度，并增加STEM专业所有学生的成功和留住。为了满足未来劳动力的需求，我们需要留住更多和更多元化的STEM本科生。提高保留率，特别是增加代表不足群体的参与率的一个障碍是，中学后STEM教育的传播模式继续占据主导地位，这已成为社会正义的一个显著问题。为了加快在中学后生命科学教育中采用循证做法，本提案的目标是从生命科学开始，在突出的教育变革努力之间建立联系，促进相互作用，提高每一项倡议的效力。使用三阶段网络改进社区形式，将使用四个面对面会议和多个虚拟会议相结合的方式来提高知识和认识，促进沟通和促进协调行动，以确定和实施共同解决方案，以应对共同的挑战。十项重要的生命科学倡议将服务于数千名教育工作者并影响数十万学生，他们将建立关系，分析共同的挑战，确定变革的步骤，并随后测试变革，以收集和共享数据。最后一个阶段将侧重于能力建设，以便在深入了解组织变革战略的基础上扩大努力。该项目将通过发展一个网络来加强所涉及的举措的影响，这些举措的共同使命是在中学后的STEM教育中更多地采用循证教学，并通过增加我们对有效的组织变革战略的了解来改善更广泛的改革努力的影响，从而促进STEM工作人员的增加和多样化。该项目由生物科学局生物基础设施部和教育与人力资源局本科教育司共同资助，作为应对《本科生物学教育愿景与变革：行动号召》中提出的挑战的努力的一部分(http://visionandchange/finalreport/).This奖反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will establish a network that allows national STEM education reform initiatives to join forces to speed adoption of effective teaching practices in post-secondary STEM education and to provide a deeper understanding of how organizations change. At present, college STEM educators rarely have formal training in teaching. As such, many teach the way they were taught using a passive, lecture method that leads to low retention and success rates for students who enter college declaring STEM majors, especially those from under-represented groups. The resulting STEM workforce is therefore unable to meet the current demand for those professionals and does not represent the diversity of the society it serves. Over the past decade many initiatives have emerged to address this issue and have made some progress in spreading awareness and some solutions. While STEM education is changing, the pace is slower than the shifting societal demands. This new network will allow established initiatives to share effective strategies and to join forces testing new strategies to increase the rate of progress in STEM education reform and increase the success and retention of all students in STEM majors. To meet the needs of the future workforce, we need to retain a larger and more diverse population of STEM undergraduates. A barrier to increasing retention, specifically increasing participation by under-represented groups, is the continued predominance of a transmission model of post-secondary STEM education which has become a marked issue of social justice. To speed adoption of evidence-based practices in post-secondary life sciences education, the goal of this proposal is to build connections between prominent education transformation efforts, starting in the life sciences, to foster interactions that increase the efficacy of each initiative. Using a three-phased Networked Improvement Communities format, a combination of four in-person and multiple virtual meetings will be used to improve knowledge and awareness, foster communication and facilitate coordinated action to identify and implement common solutions to move the needle on common challenges. Ten prominent life sciences initiatives serving thousands of educators and impacting hundreds of thousands of students will build relationships, analyze common challenges, identify steps for change, and subsequently test changes to collect and share data. The last phase will focus on building capacity to scale efforts based upon a deeper understanding of organizational change strategies. This project will contribute to increasing and diversifying the STEM workforce by growing a network to enhance the impact of the initiatives involved whose common mission is to increase adoption of evidence-based teaching in post-secondary STEM education, and improving the impact of a broader community of reform efforts by increasing our knowledge of effective organizational change strategies. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).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.