Community-engaged Courseware for STEM Success at Two-year Colleges

该项目旨在通过将两年制大学教师整合到卡内基梅隆大学开放学习倡议(OLI)适应性课程的开发和改进中来服务于国家利益，该课程将改善学生的结果，同时降低广泛的入门STEM课程的成本。有证据表明，让更多的教育工作者和学生参与到以数据为驱动的定制、改进和扩展课件的过程中，可以起到倍增的作用，使课件更好地定位于当地环境，并与学习者的先前知识联系起来。在CoVID的启发下转向远程教学，突出了积极的、异步的学习活动改善学习的潜力，并使更多的教育工作者对利用这些类型的教育技术进行创新持开放态度。该项目将建立在教育工作者与公开进修学院接触的先前工作的基础上，并吸取了如何最好地支持教师将课件整合到他们的教学实践中的经验教训。基于这些先前的发现，该项目计划将这些努力扩展到其他州的两年制系统。该项目计划让学生、教师和大学社区领导人了解围绕大规模实施服务不足的STEM学习者的在线学习政策方面的具体需求。该项目将涉及纽约和马里兰州16个两年制机构的教职员工，覆盖至少50个STEM课堂，并影响数千名学习者。该项目将通过采用、定制和学习者对开放式LI课程的贡献来改善STEM入门课程的学习者的成果。该项目将利用学习者互动和创作系统捕获的数据，并将使用通过LearnSphere广泛提供的分析方法来调查课件更改对目标学习人群结果的影响，同时通知教师反复改进课件。具体目标包括改善这些活动的用户体验，更好地了解这些活动对STEM成功的影响，特别是对于传统上服务不足的STEM学习者和成年STEM学习者。该项目将提供定制和学习者来源的工具，扩展开放的STEM自适应课程内容，了解教育技术创新政策格局，并为在全国推广提供政策建议。该项目将提供参加公开进修学院专业发展讲习班的机会；收集必要的成果和人口数据；并与公开进修学院的研究人员合作进行分析。该项目将创建工具和方法，以支持教师参与数据驱动的定制，并提供更多的学生对学习材料和见解的贡献。卡内基梅隆大学将与纽约州立大学(SUNY)和马里兰州社区学院和领导者合作，面向广泛和不同的人群。包括哈福德(MD)和拿骚(NY)社区学院在内的主要实施伙伴将推动核心研究工作，并促进在多个STEM领域招聘教师。与这些努力相结合，来自全州组织SUNY OER Services和马里兰州开放源码教科书倡议的领导人将通过现有的拨款和外联计划，帮助在各自的州社区大学社区更广泛地传播这些努力。美国国家科学基金会关于在两年制高等院校推进本科生STEM教育创新和影响的项目描述支持寻求使用创新和高影响力实践来改善STEM教育的项目，这些实践是基于证据的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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 integrating two-year college instructors into the development and improvement of Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) adaptive courseware that will improve student outcomes while reducing the cost for a broad range of gateway STEM courses. Evidence suggests that engaging a larger population of educators and students in the process of data-driven customization, improvement, and expansion of the courseware can act as a multiplier, better situating courseware in the local context and connecting with learners’ prior knowledge. The COVID-inspired pivot to remote instruction has highlighted the potential of active, asynchronous learning activities to improve learning, and has left a larger population of educators open to innovating with these types of educational technologies. The project will build on prior work where educators have engaged with OLI, and lessons were learned on how to best support faculty with integrating courseware into their instructional practice. Based on these prior findings, the project plans to expand these efforts to two-year systems in other states. The project plans to engage students, instructors, and college community leaders to understand the specific needs in terms of policy around the implementation of online learning for underserved STEM learners at scale. This project will involve faculty and staff at 16 two-year institutions in New York and Maryland, reaching at least 50 STEM classrooms, and impacting thousands of learners. The project will improve outcomes for learners in STEM gateway courses through adoption, customization, and learner-contributions to OLI courseware. The project will leverage learner-interaction and authoring data that is captured by the system, and will use analytic methods, made widely available via LearnSphere, to investigate the impact of courseware changes on outcomes for targeted learning populations while simultaneously informing the iterative improvement of courseware by faculty. Specific goals include improving the user experience for these activities, better understanding the impact of these activities on STEM success, especially with regard to traditionally underserved and adult STEM learners. The project will provide tools for customization and learner sourcing, expand open STEM adaptive courseware content, understand the ed-tech innovation policy landscape, and produce policy recommendations for scaling nationally. The project will provide access to OLI professional development (PD) workshops; collecting necessary outcome and demographic data; and collaborating with OLI researchers on analysis. The project will create tools and methods to support faculty to engage in data-driven customization and provide expanded contributions from students to learning materials and insights. Carnegie Mellon University will partner with State University of New York (SUNY) and Maryland community colleges and leaders reaching broad and diverse populations. Lead implementation partners including Harford (MD) and Nassau (NY) Community Colleges will drive core research efforts and facilitate recruitment of faculty in multiple STEM domains. In conjunction with these efforts, leaders from state-wide organizations SUNY OER Services and the Maryland Open Source Textbook initiative will help to disseminate these efforts more broadly throughout their respective state community college communities via existing grant and outreach programs. The NSF program description on Advancing Innovation and Impact in Undergraduate STEM Education at Two-year Institutions of Higher Education supports projects seeking to improve STEM education using innovative and high-impact practices that are evidence-based.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.