Capacity-Building for Transforming STEM Education Through Faculty Engagement in Data Analysis and Learning Communities

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This project aims to serve the national interest in high quality undergraduate STEM education by expanding the number of STEM faculty members who are both motivated and prepared to improve student success in STEM. To this end, it seeks to strengthen academic data infrastructure and cultivate faculty engagement in STEM education transformation. The project team recognizes that just giving faculty access to data will not inspire them to improve their teaching strategies. Therefore, the project intends to motivate faculty to use evidence-based teaching strategies by including them as co-designers of data analytics tools, narratives about the data, and community building. The project team brings expertise and experience across STEM, STEM education, and social sciences and includes faculty members and university leaders. The expected long-term outcome is increased retention and graduation rates of STEM students, including first-generation, low-income, women, and other underserved student populations.The objectives of this project are to: 1) expand academic data analytics tools that are relevant and actionable for faculty; 2) engage 24 STEM faculty members in learning communities that connect academic data with individual perspectives to motivate interest in STEM education improvements; 3) build community across STEM educators; and 4) refine theories of change and the framework for a future project to implement institutional STEM education transformation. Creating data analytical tools is an emerging approach to prompting STEM faculty motivation to implement evidence-based teaching practices. These tools, together with narratives about how data can be used to motivate change, will be disseminated broadly through conferences and publications focused on STEM education and faculty development. Through the results of formative and summative project evaluation, this project will provide insights about effective strategies to engage STEM faculty in scientific inquiry into how to support student success at a public, regional, primarily undergraduate institution. 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, including capacity-building projects such as this.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.