CAREER: Translating Innovations from the Sleep Laboratory to Enhance Classroom Education and Informal Science Learning

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program is a National Science Foundation-wide activity that offers awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This award to a scientist at Baylor University has the goal of improving STEM education at the undergraduate level by bridging the gap between laboratory-based and home-based studies in sleep science. Ten million American college students regularly suffer from short or poor-quality sleep, a national problem that has immediate and long-term health, social, economic, and educational consequences. Recent work indicates that sleep problems are particularly prevalent in women and minority groups who historically have also been underrepresented in STEM fields, thereby signaling a novel opportunity to mitigate a longstanding educational challenge known as the achievement gap. To address these national and longstanding concerns, this project will: a) experimentally test how variable sleep and mild sleep loss affect one’s ability to learn challenging STEM content; b) investigate whether sleep interventions that are implemented in STEM classroom settings can improve academic outcomes and reduce achievement gaps; c) broadly disseminate the optimal means to improve sleep via a diversity of student-led community outreach activities and the development of a permanent sleep exhibit at the local museum. Collectively, the project will help to achieve desired societal outcomes including augmenting educational practices, strengthening science literacy and public communication, and improving the well-being of students, parents, and teachers. The project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances the fundamental research literature on STEM learning and broadening participation in STEM fields.This project will combine experimental and correlational methods to inform how sleep restriction and sleep variability impact learning and stress in the context of gateway STEM courses. In a polysomnography-monitored laboratory setting, participants will sleep on a consistent, restricted, or variable schedule prior to attempting to learn challenging organic chemistry content. In a naturalistic setting, students enrolled in organic chemistry will wear wristband actigraphy across the semester to determine which sleep patterns are predictive of academic outcomes. In classroom-based intervention studies, students will be randomly assigned to receive sleep education only or sleep education augmented with behavioral change techniques. The goal is to determine whether students can improve their sleep in the midst of demanding STEM courses, and if doing so benefits their academic performance. For all studies, this project will test whether sleep patterns mediate the relationship between academic achievement and race, ethnicity, and gender. The polysomnography, actigraphy, and survey data will be further analyzed to investigate longitudinal associations between sleep patterns and STEM outcomes.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.