Mobile Summer Institutes: Creating Points of Transformation in Post-Secondary STEM Education

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The National Academies Summer Institutes (SI) began in response to the 2003 National Resource Council report BIO2010: Transforming Undergraduate Education for Future Research Biologists and, with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, have evolved from one site in 2003 to six sites in 2015, each conducting five day workshops to engage university faculty in adapting effective teaching approaches as revealed by recent educational research. The Mobile Summer Institutes (MSIs) are an innovative variation on the SI. They respond to the call for the need for all students to experience science courses that reflect current advances in science and teaching approaches and technologies that science education researchers have proven to be effective, as stated in the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2014) and Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education, a 2011 document representing the views of over 500 biology faculty and administrators. The MSIs use Henderson's model of Four Categories of Change Strategies and add three new components to the current SI pedagogical training format: 1) peer evaluation to foster acquisition of reflective practices by participants; 2) a strategic planning workshop to leverage the newly acquired STEM reform vision and expertise supplied by the mobile institutes; and 3) a workshop for local administrators to foster awareness, buy-in and support for STEM reform initiatives by participants. The MSIs will travel to college campuses to train participants in active learning methods and strategies for peer-evaluation that will allow them to provide feedback to one another so that they may continually improve their implementation of the active learning strategies in their classrooms. Participants will take part in workshops that will facilitate the development of plans to address specific institutional barriers that may inhibit educational reform on their own campuses. Workshops will also be held for local administrators to foster administrative support for the education reform initiatives that participants undertake. Finally, participants who have some prior experience in reforming their own classrooms will be trained to present the summer institute workshops so that, after being involved in two (MSIs) on their campuses, they can direct summer institutes on their campuses, thus increasing the impact of the MSIs beyond the project period. The host institutions will thus become nodes for diffusion of a common framework for educational reform within their growing local network of schools in addition to connecting with the greater SI community. The current project is essentially a proof of concept.This project is funded jointly by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education in support of efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Education: A Call to Action http://visionandchange.org/finalreport/.