Beyond Success: Transforming Learning by Helping Students to Thrive

这个项目旨在通过帮助工程学和计算机专业的学生茁壮成长来服务于国家利益，而不仅仅是取得好成绩。这有可能留住更多的工程学学生，提高他们的毕业率。作为教育的一部分，成绩优秀的学生积极追求“做得好”和“感觉好”这两个目标。该项目致力于开始转变工程教育的文化，从一种学生只努力在学业上取得成功的文化，转变为一种他们也在寻求幸福的文化。实现这一目标将带来一种在工程和计算机专业学生中蓬勃发展的文化，而这种文化目前还不存在。学生可以通过学习和采用茁壮成长的能力--技能、行为和信念--来提升茁壮成长的“感觉良好”部分，从而做到这一点。该项目旨在开发一系列基于能力的干预措施，以改善例如工程身份、归属感、感恩、正念、心态和压力管理，并测试其有效性。实现项目目标将促进人们对蓬勃发展的工程教育的作用及其对培养更多工程师以满足国家需求的影响的理解。该项目建立在对非认知和情感因素的已知基础上--这些因素与天赋或智力无关，但已被证明与学术成功密切相关，有时是以非直觉的方式。项目团队将执行一项精心设计的计划，通过移动应用程序(或“应用程序”)、基于课堂的活动以及课外或俱乐部活动来开发、测试和部署蓬勃发展的能力。每项能力的部署计划将以关于有效干预措施的先前研究为指导，并有证据支持。该计划还将包括与考试学校的学术和学生事务单位合作，并将收集数据，通过使用调查工具和合理的分析方法，通过直接量化措施来衡量各种举措的效果。最后，项目评估将包括对学生的访谈，以确定学生是否已将蓬勃发展的能力纳入他们的教育工具集。该项目的更广泛影响通过两种方式实现。首先，该项目将与服务不足的学生合作，这些学生被定义为代表不足的少数族裔、第一代或低收入学生。这一选择解决了历史上的教育不平等问题，并确保这些学生得到服务。其次，该项目将把该项目的成功部分传播给更多的伙伴学校，以更广泛和在不同的教育背景下测试这些举措的成效。NSF IUSE：EDU计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生的STEM教育的有效性。通过机构和社区转型轨道，该计划支持高等教育机构和学科社区转变和改进STEM教育的努力。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 helping engineering and computing students to thrive, rather than just attain good grades. This has the potential to retain more students in engineering and improve their graduation rate. Thriving students actively pursue the twin goals of 'doing well' and 'feeling good' as part of their education. This project aspires to begin transforming the culture of engineering education from one in which students strive solely to succeed academically (the 'doing well') to one in which they also seek wellbeing. Achieving this goal would lead to a culture of thriving among engineering and computing students that does not currently exist. Students can do this by learning and adopting thriving competencies - skills, behaviors and beliefs - to boost the 'feeling good' part of thriving. This project aims to develop a series of competency-based interventions to improve, for example, engineering identity, belongingness, gratitude, mindfulness, mindset and stress management, and to test their efficacy. Achieving the project goals will advance the understanding of the role of thriving in engineering education and its impact on graduating more engineers to meet the nation's needs.This project builds on what is known about noncognitive and affective factors - factors not related to talent or intelligence but are proven to be powerfully associated with academic success, sometimes in nonintuitive ways. The project team will execute a well-designed plan to develop, test and deploy thriving competencies through mobile applications (or 'apps'), classroom-based activities, and extracurricular or club activities. The deployment scheme for each competency will be guided by prior research on effective interventions and supported by evidence. The plan will also include partnering with both academic and Student Affairs units at the test school and will gather data to measure the efficacy of various initiatives through direct quantitative measures using survey instruments and sound analytical methods. Finally, the project evaluation will include student interviews to determine whether students have adopted the thriving competencies into their educational toolset. The broader impacts of this project are achieved in two ways. First, this project will work with underserved students, defined as underrepresented minority, first-generation or low-income students. This choice addresses historic educational inequities and ensures that these students are served. Second, this project will disseminate the successful parts of the project to additional partner schools to test the efficacy of the initiatives more widely and in diverse educational contexts. The NSF IUSE: EDU 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.