Using Behavioral Nudges in Peer Review to Improve Critical Analysis in STEM Courses

在同行评审中利用行为助推来改进 STEM 课程中的批判性分析

• 批准号: 2216227
• 负责人: Alon Friedman
• 金额: $ 29.76万
• 依托单位: University of South Florida
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-11-01 至 2025-10-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2216227&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Using; Behavioral; Nudges; Peer; Review

This project aims to serve the national interest by increasing the quality of peer reviews given by students. Peer reviews, in which students have the opportunity to analyze and evaluate projects made by their classroom peers, are a widely acknowledged pedagogical method for engaging students and have become a standard practice in undergraduate education. Peer review is most often used in classes with large number of students to provide timely feedback on student assignments. However, peer review has benefits far beyond scalability. Peer review gathers diverse feedback, raises students’ comfort level with having their work evaluated in a professional setting, and most importantly, the action of giving a peer review is often more valuable than receiving a peer review. The software platforms in current use that support peer review have seen limited innovation in recent decades, and potential improvements to enhance student outcomes have not been thoroughly evaluated. This project plans to develop and study an innovative peer review system that uses behavioral nudges, a method of subtlety reinforcing positive habits, to improve the evaluation skills of students and the quality of the feedback they provide in peer reviews.This project proposes to 1) create a software system supporting peer review that includes behavioral nudges for guiding the peer review process to hone students’ evaluation and critical analysis skills and 2) study how the use of behavioral nudges improves student engagement. The approach will be evaluated using four different visualization courses that serve approximately 800 students per year. Two groups of students will be studied. The control group will utilize peer review with additional feedback modalities but no nudges, while the test group will use peer review with the same feedback modalities but also include nudges. Common statistical tests such as, ANOVA, t-tests, and correlations, will be used to validate the results. The resulting system could provide a significant and measurable improvement in outcomes in courses that utilize peer review across different STEM disciplines. The resulting technologies will be disseminated as open source to enable widespread adoption. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program 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.

该项目旨在通过提高学生同行评议的质量来服务于国家利益。在同侪评议中，学生有机会分析和评估同班同学所做的项目，这是一种广泛认可的吸引学生的教学方法，已成为本科教育的标准做法。同行评议最常用于有大量学生的班级，为学生的作业提供及时的反馈。然而，同行评审的好处远远超出了可扩展性。同行评议收集了各种各样的反馈，提高了学生在专业环境下对他们的工作进行评估的舒适度，最重要的是，给予同行评议的行为通常比接受同行评议更有价值。近几十年来，目前使用的支持同行评议的软件平台创新有限，提高学生成绩的潜在改进也没有得到彻底的评估。该项目计划开发和研究一种创新的同行评议系统，该系统使用行为推动（一种微妙地加强积极习惯的方法）来提高学生的评估技能和他们在同行评议中提供的反馈的质量。该项目建议：1)创建一个支持同行评议的软件系统，其中包括指导同行评议过程的行为推动，以培养学生的评估和批判性分析技能；2)研究如何使用行为推动提高学生的参与度。该方法将通过四种不同的可视化课程进行评估，每年为大约800名学生提供服务。将研究两组学生。对照组将使用同行评议和额外的反馈方式，但不使用轻推，而测试组将使用同行评议和相同的反馈方式，但也包括轻推。常用的统计检验，如方差分析、t检验和相关性，将用于验证结果。由此产生的系统可以为利用不同STEM学科的同行评议的课程的成果提供重大且可衡量的改进。由此产生的技术将作为开放源代码传播，以便广泛采用。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。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划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。