Collaborative Research: CourseSource: Developing, Disseminating, and Understanding the Usefulness of Resources for Evidence-based Undergraduate Biology Teaching

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Although many STEM courses have implemented evidence-based pedagogies, didactic lectures remain the predominant feature of most college classes. In fact, many STEM instructors hesitate to implement effective pedagogies, such as active learning and inclusive teaching practices, even when they know that these practices can improve student learning. However, improvements in undergraduate teaching effectiveness may not require full-scale revision of courses, but instead can result from small changes, and research supports the hypothesis that incremental changes can be enabled by the right kind of teaching resources. This project will support and expand the journal, CourseSource that was created in response to recommendations from the NSF/AAAS Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education initiative. CourseSource is a journal of evidence-based, field-tested lessons in undergraduate biology that publishes rigorously peer-reviewed Lessons in a common format. This project will support the development and publication of additional Lessons. In addition, it will support development of critical automation and functionality needed to make CourseSource a sustainable journal with high levels of usability and user responsiveness. Finally, development of a broad suite of web analytics will enable the identification of teaching materials characteristics that lead to adoption or adaptation by others.Developing CourseSource will provide an important avenue for publishing evidence-based teaching materials, and project outcomes will contribute to an understanding of the relationship between implementation of evidence-based teaching by higher education instructors and the design/dissemination of effective teaching materials. Publication of evidence-based teaching materials in a peer-reviewed, high-quality journal is expected to increase the value of evidence-based teaching for promotion and tenure, helping to support these practices by tenure-track, research faculty in colleges and universities. In addition, the information learned through the project activities will be used iteratively and directly to improve CourseSource Lessons, thus strengthening the impact of the journal on implementation of evidence-based teaching. The design principles uncovered as a result of this project will be relevant for other educational reform efforts and digital repositories of teaching resources.