Collaborative Research: Student engagement with online formative assessments: Identifying access and barriers to resource use at two-year and four-year institutions

该项目旨在通过提高两年制和四年制大学学生对本科生物学课程的参与度，为国家利益服务。具体而言，研究小组将探讨学生如何与在线作业互动，以及影响这种互动的因素。形成性评估让学生有机会测试和修改他们对课程内容的理解，然后再测量他们的学习情况，以确定他们的课程成绩。然而，教师通常希望学生在课外完成形成性评估，通常是通过在线平台。对这些额外工作的期望给一些学生带来了挑战。例如，学生接触技术的机会可能有限，或者有外部责任，这影响了他们花在这些作业上的时间。由于为应对2019冠状病毒病大流行，高等教育对远程或在线学习的依赖迅速和持续增加，这些挑战及其不平等分布受到了关注。这些挑战很可能会影响学生的学习方法和他们选择的资源。然而，很少有研究探讨学生完成在线作业的方法。该项目旨在帮助填补这一空白，从而提供工具来改善学生的教学策略，并提高他们在在线环境中的学习能力。该项目旨在通过深入了解学生的背景和环境如何影响他们在在线课程中的学习行为，以及这些行为如何影响课程成果，从而造福社会。在先前研究的基础上，本项目将采用多种方法来调查和提高本科生在课外完成在线形成性评估的参与度。项目团队将开创一种新的两阶段协议，包括对生物学学生完成真实在线课程作业的视频记录，然后进行后续访谈，以阐明他们的学习方法，讨论他们为什么使用某些资源（例如，同学、教科书、网站），并确定资源访问的潜在障碍（例如，互联网可用性、社会联系）。根据这些访谈，项目团队将为学生创建封闭式调查，以报告他们的学习方法和资源使用情况，并指出可能影响他们完成在线作业能力的外部因素。广泛地管理这些工具将有助于探索个人人口统计、获取/障碍、形成性评估、利用行为和学习成果之间的定量联系。特别注意到服务不足群体面临的潜在障碍，项目团队将促进一个由生物学教师组成的工作组，该工作组将制定和实施策略，指导学生如何克服挑战，并有效地与在线作业进行互动。新开发的调查工具将用于监测这项指导对学生成绩的影响。通过向教育社区发布报告，该项目将有助于用基于证据的学生完成在线作业的经验来取代轶事直觉。考虑到各机构长期以来希望开发灵活的课程形式，以适应繁忙的学生日程安排，研究异步作业完成是一个重要的研究方向。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。这个一级项目与参与学生学习轨道一致，它支持有前途的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。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。

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving student engagement in undergraduate biology courses at two-year and four-year institutions. Specifically, the research team will explore how students interact with online assignments and what factors influence that interaction. Formative assessments give students the opportunity to test and revise their understanding of course content before their learning is measured to determine their course grade. However, instructors often expect students to complete formative assessments outside of class, typically via online platforms. The expectation of this additional work creates challenges for some students. For example, students may have limited access to technology or have external responsibilities that affect the time they can spend on these assignments. Such challenges and their unequal distribution have been spotlighted because of the rapid and sustained increase in higher education’s dependence on remote or online learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is likely that these challenges affect how students approach learning and the resources they choose. However, few studies have been done to explore student approaches to completing online assignments. This project aims to help fill this gap, and thus provide tools to improve students’ instructional strategies and enhance their learning in online environments. This project intends to benefit society by providing insights into how student backgrounds and circumstances affect their learning behaviors in online courses and how these behaviors affect course outcomes.Building on prior research, this project will adopt a multi-methods approach to investigate and improve undergraduate student engagement with online formative assessments completed outside of class time. The project team will pioneer a novel two-stage protocol involving video recordings of biology students completing authentic online course assignments and then conduct follow-up interviews to clarify their learning approaches, discuss why they used certain resources (e.g., classmates; textbooks; websites), and identify potential barriers to resource access (e.g., internet availability; social connectedness). Drawing from these interviews, the project team will create closed-ended surveys for students to report their learning approaches and resource use and indicate external factors that might affect their ability to complete online assignments. Administering these instruments broadly will allow exploration of quantitative connections between personal demographics, access/barriers, formative assessments utilization behaviors, and learning outcomes. With particular attention to the potential barriers faced by underserved groups, the project team will facilitate a working group of biology faculty that will develop and implement strategies to guide students about how to overcome challenges and interact productively with online assignments. The newly developed survey instruments will be used to monitor the impact that this guidance has on student outcomes. By disseminating findings through reports to educational communities, this project will help replace anecdotal intuitions with evidence-based accounts of student experiences in completing online assignments. Investigating asynchronous assignment completion represents a critical research direction given the longstanding desire among institutions to develop flexible course formats that work with busy student schedules. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. This Level 1 project is aligned with the Engaged Student Learning track, which the supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.