Adoption and Adaptation of Educational Innovations in Multiple Settings and the Role of Institutional Culture

本项目由美国国家科学基金“改善本科STEM教育计划：教育与人力资源”（IUSE: EHR）资助，旨在通过推广循证教学实践，服务于高质量工程教育的国家利益。几十年来，教育工作者一直在追求创新，以改善本科工程教育。许多这些创新都有令人信服的证据证明它们在单个教室或机构中是有效的。然而，在新环境中采用这些创新并不总是成功的，有时创新需要进行重大改变以使其适应当地环境。发展和实施层面的机构和社区转型（ICT）项目将探索采用和适应新环境的教育创新方式。它还将评估创新的成功与否，以学生的成绩来衡量。这项研究将有助于社区理解教育创新能够传播的条件，以及为什么一些创新成功地扩展到其他环境而另一些则失败的原因。当创新能够很容易地适应新环境时，学生将受益，因为他们将有更多的机会获得教学和学习工具，以尽可能最好的方式支持他们的教育。该项目将推广Freeform，这是一个由NSF资助开发的教学系统。Freeform在资源丰富的学习环境中包含主动的、混合的和协作的组件。五个新的设置将实现Freeform，项目团队将同时评估新设置的文化，以评估它们在实施过程中确定的创新的接受程度。接受创新是很重要的，因为许多改革传统工程系核心教育实践的尝试都失败了，因为它们要么集中在少数狂热者身上，他们改造了一两个课程，要么集中在课程改革上，而没有考虑学术单位的潜在文化。这些变化往往无法持续，因为它们与当地文化不相适应。这个项目将关注两个耦合的问题，创新和传播。如果将这两个问题作为一个系统加以探索和理解，那么开发可推广到新环境的教学创新的能力将大大提高。相应的采用和适应过程将通过人类学方法的文化镜头进行检查。先前的工作产生了独特的数据集和研究方法，探索教学创新和资源，以支持学生以及部门和大学文化在采用教学法中的作用。目前的研究将使用混合方法来形成详细的数据收集和分析，利用研究团队的专业知识。该项目有可能扩大对如何在多种环境下为不同学生采用、调整和实施教学创新的理解。该研究框架将适用于其他教育创新在新环境中的传播，并将为工程教育研究和实践者社区提供实施和评估教学变革的新方法。IUSE: EHR支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过机构和社区转型轨道，该计划支持高等教育机构和学科社区的STEM教育转型和改善。该奖项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。

With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR), this project aims to serve the national interest in high quality engineering education by propagating evidence-based teaching practices. Educators have pursued innovations to improve undergraduate engineering education for decades. Many of these innovations have compelling evidence of their effectiveness in a single classroom or institution. However, adoption of these innovations in new settings is not always successful, and sometimes the innovation requires substantial changes to adapt it to the local environment. This Institutional and Community Transformation (ICT) project in the Development and Implementation tier will explore the ways in which an educational innovation is adopted and adapted to new settings. It will also evaluate the success of the innovation, as measured by student outcomes. This research will help the community understand the conditions under which educational innovations can propagate and the reasons why some innovations succeed in being scaled to other settings while others fail. Students will benefit when innovations can be readily adapted to new environments because they will have increased access to teaching and learning tools that support their education in the best possible ways. This project will propagate Freeform, a pedagogical system developed with prior NSF funding. Freeform encompasses active, blended, and collaborative components in a resource-rich learning environment. Five new settings will implement Freeform, and the project team will simultaneously evaluate the cultures of the new settings to assess their receptivity to innovation as determined during the implementation. Receptivity to innovation is important because many attempts to reform the core educational practices in traditional engineering departments have failed because they have either been centered on a few enthusiasts who transformed one or two courses, or they have focused on curriculum reform without consideration of the underlying culture of the academic unit. The changes are often not sustained because they are not appropriately aligned with the local culture. This project will focus on two coupled issues, innovation and propagation. If these two issues are explored and understood together as a system, the ability to develop pedagogical innovations that can be propagated to new environments will be significantly enhanced. The corresponding process of adoption and adaptation will be examined through a cultural lens using anthropological approaches. Prior work has resulted in unique datasets and research approaches that explore pedagogical innovation and resources to support students and the role of departmental and university culture in the adoption of pedagogies. The current research will use a mixed-methods approach to shape detailed data collection and analysis, leveraging the research team's expertise. This project has the potential to expand understanding about how pedagogical innovations are adopted, adapted, and implemented for diverse students in multiple settings. It is expected that this research framework will be applicable to the propagation of other educational innovations to new settings, and it will provide the engineering education research and practitioner communities with a new approach to implementing and evaluating pedagogical changes. IUSE: EHR supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities.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.