Promoting Motivation for Underrepresented Groups in Undergraduate Biology and Chemistry Courses

提高本科生物和化学课程中代表性不足群体的积极性

• 批准号: 9902540
• 负责人: Judith M. Harackiewicz
• 金额: $ 36.79万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-08-15 至 2022-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9902540
• 关键词: Achievement; Address; Biology; Chemistry; Course Content; Double-Blind Method; Effectiveness; Enrollment; Experimental Designs; First Generation College Students; Funding; Generations; Goals; Health; Hispanics; Institution; Instruction; Intervention; Knowledge; Laboratory Study; Montana; Motivation; National Institute of General Medical Sciences; Native Americans; Nature; Parents; Performance; Persons; Population; Procedures; Randomized; Research; Risk; Sampling; Science; Series; Students; Talents; Testing; Time; Underrepresented Groups; Underrepresented Minority; United States National Institutes of Health; Universities; Wisconsin; Work; Writing; career; college; commune; compare effectiveness; design; efficacy testing; essays; experimental study; field study; group intervention; improved; interest; intervention effect; laboratory experiment; learning materials; longitudinal design; programs; scale up; theories; undergraduate student; underrepresented minority student

Promoting Motivation for Underrepresented Groups in Undergraduate Biology and Chemistry Courses ABSTRACT Our goal is to broaden the participation of at risk-students in biomedical fields with interventions in gateway biology and chemistry classes. Using a theoretically-grounded utility-value intervention, we aim to close achievement gaps for first-generation (FG) students, those for whom neither parent obtained a 4-year college degree, and for underrepresented minority (URM) students. Lessons learned from our previously funded large-scale double-blind randomized field experiment in introductory biology courses at the University of Wisconsin- Madison (UW) demonstrated that the utility value intervention (UVI), in which students write about the personal relevance of course material, was successful in reducing the achievement gap for URM students by 40%, relative to a control condition in which students summarized course content. This effect was even larger for FG-URM students: the gap was reduced by 61%. We build upon these findings by proposing research to (1) determine whether the UVI effects documented at Wisconsin can be replicated in different types of institutions and courses, and whether the UVI can be adapted for a more diverse student sample and (2) systematically understand and refine the nature of the UVI by continuing to test the underlying motivational theory and mechanisms. To accomplish our goals, our research team at UW will first conduct a series of laboratory experiments designed to optimize materials and implementation features of the UVI to create new versions of the UVI that emphasize communal themes. We know from our previous work that the UVI was most effective for students who were motivated to help others, and for FG and URM students who wrote about communal themes in their essays. This raises new questions about whether communal writing is integral to the effectiveness of the UVI for FG-URM students and whether we might see even stronger UVI effects for FG and URM students if they are specifically encouraged to reflect on communal themes. We have developed an experimental design to address these critical questions using multi-institutional field experiments that provide tests of replication and scale-up potential in biology classes and extension to chemistry classes, and identify the optimal approach for the greatest impact of the UVI. We test the new communal-UVI against the original personal-UVI and control writing assignments with nearly 5,000 students across 6 academic semesters of biology and chemistry in two uniquely diverse institutions: San Diego State University and Montana State University, which serve a significant number of FG students and enroll large populations of Latino and Native American students, respectively.

促进大学生弱势群体的动机 生物和化学课程 摘要 我们的目标是通过干预措施扩大处于风险中的学生在生物医学领域的参与 在生物和化学课上。使用理论上的实用价值 通过干预，我们的目标是缩小第一代（FG）学生的成绩差距， 父母双方都没有获得4年制大学学位的人，以及代表性不足的少数民族 (URM)学生从我们以前资助的大规模双盲试验中吸取的经验教训 威斯康星州大学生物学导论课程的随机现场实验- 麦迪逊（UW）证明，效用价值干预（UVI），其中学生写 关于课程材料的个人相关性，成功地减少了成绩 URM学生的差距为40%，相对于控制条件，学生总结 课程内容对于FG-URM学生来说，这种影响甚至更大：差距缩小了 百分之六十一我们在这些发现的基础上提出研究，以（1）确定紫外线是否 在威斯康星州记录的效果可以在不同类型的机构和课程中复制， 以及UVI是否可以适应更多样化的学生样本以及（2）系统地 通过继续测试潜在的动机，理解和完善UVI的性质 理论和机制。为了实现我们的目标，我们在华盛顿大学的研究团队将首先进行一项 一系列实验室实验，旨在优化材料和实施功能， UVI创建新版本的UVI，强调共同的主题。根据我们的 以前的研究表明，UVI对那些有帮助他人动机的学生最有效， 以及FG和URM的学生，他们在论文中写了关于公共主题的文章。这就提出 关于社区写作是否是UVI有效性不可或缺的新问题， FG-URM学生，以及我们是否可能看到FG和URM的UVI效应更强 学生，如果他们被特别鼓励反思公共主题。我们已经开发 一个实验设计，以解决这些关键问题，使用多机构领域 在生物课上提供复制和扩大潜力测试的实验， 延伸到化学类，并确定最佳方法的最大影响， 紫外线我们将新的公共UVI与原始的个人UVI和控制书写进行测试 近5,000名学生在6个学期的生物学和 化学在两个独特的不同机构：圣地亚哥州立大学和蒙大拿州立大学 大学，为大量的FG学生提供服务，并招收大量的 拉丁美洲和美洲原住民学生分别。