Collaborative Research: Characterizing Best Practices of Instructors who Have Narrowed Performance Gaps in Undergraduate Student Achievement in Introductory STEM Courses

合作研究：缩小本科生 STEM 入门课程成绩差距的讲师的最佳实践

• 批准号: 2012792
• 负责人: Elli Theobald
• 金额: $ 134.01万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-10-01 至 2025-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2012792&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Characterizing; Best; Practices

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving undergraduate student achievement in introductory STEM courses. It will do so by identifying classroom practices that enable a greater number of students to thrive in these courses. Whether or not a person completes a four-year undergraduate degree is a primary driver of income levels. Thus, barriers to earning degrees can present significant obstacles to socioeconomic mobility in the United States. One such barrier is successful completion of introductory STEM courses. Persistence in these courses varies even in STEM disciplines in which students from under-represented groups enter the major at the same rates as their majority peers. Persistence of students is affected by how their instructors teach. For example, incorporating active learning methods in introductory STEM courses can increase student achievement and lower performance gaps. However, not all implementations of active learning are equally effective for supporting these outcomes. A meta-analysis of over 46,000 students in a wide array of STEM courses compared student outcomes in lecture-based versus active learning classrooms. Active learning reduced achievement gaps in exam scores by an average of 40% and the gap in failure rates by 75%. Surprisingly, some active learning interventions widened achievement gaps, raising questions about why the variation exists. Findings from the literature point to two complementary elements of the classroom experience that are necessary to close achievement gaps: (1) an inclusive environment where all students believe they can be successful, which primes them to meaningfully engage; and (2) active learning that follows best practices for how people learn. This project team aims to identify and test the impact of specific elements of classroom culture and course design that effectively narrow achievement gaps.This project has three aims: (1) Generate an explanatory model of achievement gaps by identifying and measuring a set of critical elements for closing these gaps in 12 courses identified in a meta-analysis that either narrowed or widened achievement gaps; (2) Establish generalizability of critical elements on achievement gaps by training and validating a predictive model on a national sample of 40 additional introductory courses from a wide array of institution types; (3) Develop, evaluate, and promote a Practitioner’s Toolkit for Closing Achievement Gaps. This Toolkit will include instructor and student questionnaires that feed directly to a data processing application that fits the predictive model for unique classrooms. In addition, the Toolkit will include self-reflection activities to promote engagement with the personalized results of the predictive model and a guidebook for improvement that explains implementation of each critical element. Thus, this project intends to produce a novel set of tools that instructors can use to enhance student performance in higher education, helping to make a four-year degree attainable by all students. The tools developed by the project will be freely available online and disseminated through invited seminars, workshops, and presentations at national meetings. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program 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.

该项目旨在通过提高本科生在STEM入门课程中的成绩来服务于国家利益。 它将通过确定课堂实践，使更多的学生在这些课程中茁壮成长来做到这一点。 一个人是否完成四年制本科学位是收入水平的主要驱动因素。 因此，获得学位的障碍可能会对美国的社会经济流动性构成重大障碍。 其中一个障碍是成功完成STEM入门课程。 即使在STEM学科中，这些课程的持续性也各不相同，在这些学科中，来自代表性不足的群体的学生以与大多数同龄人相同的速度进入该专业。 学生的坚持性受教师教学方式的影响。 例如，在STEM入门课程中融入主动学习方法可以提高学生的成绩，降低成绩差距。然而，并非所有主动学习的实施都同样有效地支持这些结果。一项对46，000多名学生参加各种STEM课程的荟萃分析比较了基于讲座的学生与主动学习课堂的学生成果。 主动学习将考试成绩的差距平均缩小了40%，将不及格率的差距缩小了75%。令人惊讶的是，一些积极的学习干预措施扩大了成绩差距，提出了为什么存在差异的问题。 从文献中的调查结果指出，课堂经验的两个互补要素是必要的，以缩小成绩差距：（1）一个包容的环境，所有学生都相信他们可以成功，这使他们有意义地参与;（2）积极学习，遵循人们如何学习的最佳实践。 本项目旨在确定和测试课堂文化和课程设计中有效缩小成绩差距的具体因素的影响，本项目有三个目标：（1）通过确定和测量一系列关键因素，以缩小12门课程中缩小或扩大成绩差距的成绩差距，从而产生一个解释性模型;（2）通过培训和验证一个预测模型，建立关于成就差距的关键要素的普遍性，该模型是在来自各种机构类型的40个额外入门课程的国家样本上进行的;（3）开发、评估和推广缩小成就差距的从业人员工具包。 该工具包将包括教师和学生的问卷调查，这些问卷调查直接提供给适合独特教室预测模型的数据处理应用程序。此外，工具包还将包括自我反思活动，以促进参与预测模型的个性化结果，以及一本改进指南，解释每个关键要素的执行情况。 因此，该项目旨在制作一套新颖的工具，教师可以用来提高学生在高等教育中的表现，帮助所有学生获得四年制学位。 该项目开发的工具将在网上免费提供，并通过应邀举办的研讨会、讲习班和在国家会议上的发言加以传播。 NSF IUSE：EHR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。 通过机构和社区转型的轨道，该计划支持的努力，以改变和改善高等教育机构和学科社区的STEM教育.这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估支持.