Enhancing Durable and Efficient Student Learning in Undergraduate Gateway STEM Courses

增强学生在本科入门 STEM 课程中持久、高效的学习

• 批准号: 1914499
• 负责人: John Dunlosky
• 金额: $ 55.21万
• 依托单位: Kent State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-12-01 至 2024-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1914499&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Enhancing; Durable; Efficient; Student; Learning

This project aims to serve the national interest by applying learning research to help undergraduate students learn and remember foundational scientific concepts. In STEM disciplines, students must be able to remember and use what they learned in introductory courses months after those courses have ended. This durability of knowledge enables students to build a cumulative knowledge base as they move from introductory classes to more advanced coursework. Accordingly, instructors in introductory STEM courses face a major problem: how can they help their students learn key concepts so that they remember and can use this knowledge in the future? The problem is even more overwhelming when one considers the amount of information that STEM students are expected to learn. If students are to learn and remember all the important content, they must use their study time as efficiently as possible. To help instructors and students meet these challenges, this Development and Implementation (Level I) proposal (Engaged Student Learning Track) will evaluate a web-based learning tool. This tool applies research about how people make long-term memories and will be used by students in gateway courses in chemistry, biology, and physics. At intervals, the tool will quiz students about foundational concepts and provide feedback on their performance. The project expects that, by providing multiple opportunities to remember, review, and relearn foundational concepts, the tool will improve the efficiency and durability of students' learning. This review-feedback method is based on simple, but powerful learning tasks. As a result, it could be used for a broad range of content across many STEM courses. Thus, this project has the potential to enhance student success in many STEM disciplines. The specific objectives of this project are to experimentally evaluate: 1) the efficacy of using a Retrieval-Monitoring-Feedback (RMF) method to improve student achievement on high-stakes exams in gateway STEM courses; 2) the degree to which the RMF method enhances performance on distal outcomes; and 3) the degree to which a refresher session using the RMF method enhances course exam performance in advanced courses in the subsequent semester. Fundamental concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics will be identified, and the web-based tool will prompt students to study the course concepts twice a week. During each study session, the web-based tool will prompt students to retrieve the targeted concepts and will provide feedback that allows students to accurately score their responses and to relearn the correct answers. Students will continue being quizzed until they can correctly retrieve the meaning of each concept, and then they will repeat this procedure to review or relearn the same concepts in subsequent sessions. Based on laboratory studies of learning, it is known that such successive relearning can produce durable learning of science concepts. Thus, a major benefit of the project to society is that it will evaluate its efficacy for boosting students' achievement outside of the laboratory, specifically in the real-world context of undergraduate science courses in biology, chemistry, and physics. This project is supported by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.

该项目旨在通过应用学习研究来帮助本科生学习和记忆基础科学概念，从而为国家利益服务。在STEM学科中，学生必须能够在这些课程结束后的几个月内记住并使用他们在入门课程中学到的东西。 这种知识的持久性使学生能够建立一个累积的知识基础，因为他们从入门课程到更先进的课程。因此，STEM入门课程的教师面临着一个主要问题：他们如何帮助学生学习关键概念，以便他们记住并在未来使用这些知识？当人们考虑到STEM学生需要学习的信息量时，这个问题就更加突出了。 如果学生要学习和记住所有重要的内容，他们必须尽可能有效地利用他们的学习时间。为了帮助教师和学生应对这些挑战，本开发和实施（一级）提案（学生学习跟踪）将评估一个基于网络的学习工具。 这个工具应用了关于人们如何形成长期记忆的研究，并将被学生用于化学，生物和物理的入门课程。 该工具将不时地对学生进行关于基本概念的测验，并就他们的表现提供反馈。 该项目预计，通过提供多种机会来记住，审查和重新学习基本概念，该工具将提高学生学习的效率和持久性。 这种回顾反馈方法基于简单但强大的学习任务。 因此，它可以用于许多STEM课程的广泛内容。因此，这个项目有可能提高学生在许多STEM学科的成功。该项目的具体目标是通过实验评估：1）使用检索-监测-反馈（RMF）方法提高学生在门户STEM课程高风险考试中的成绩的有效性; 2）RMF方法提高远端结果的程度;以及3）使用RMF方法的复习课程在多大程度上提高了下学期高级课程的课程考试成绩。生物学，化学和物理学的基本概念将被确定，基于网络的工具将促使学生每周学习两次课程概念。 在每次学习期间，基于网络的工具将提示学生检索目标概念，并提供反馈，使学生能够准确地对他们的回答进行评分并重新学习正确的答案。学生将继续接受测验，直到他们能够正确地检索每个概念的含义，然后他们将重复这个过程，以审查或重新学习相同的概念在随后的会议。基于实验室的学习研究，人们知道，这种连续的再学习可以产生持久的学习科学概念。 因此，该项目对社会的一个主要好处是，它将评估其在实验室之外提高学生成绩的有效性，特别是在生物学，化学和物理学本科科学课程的现实环境中。 该项目得到了NSF改善本科STEM教育计划的支持：教育和人力资源，该计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。