Project Kaleidoscope: Encouraging Collaborations for Developing Undergraduate STEM Faculty

这一教师发展项目通过强调机构一级的行动，正在提高1 200多个校园的科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）教师群体的能力，以加强本科生的学习。在过去五年中积极参与PKAL的642个校园的基础上，该项目将使积极致力于发展STEM教师的学院和大学数量增加一倍，以加强学生的学习。活动包括一系列研讨会和活动，旨在帮助建立和扩大专业组织，大学和学院的社区，以及从事促进STEM本科教育卓越的教师。 除了注重改变大学本科教育的校园和院系方法的有效方法的程序外，这一系列讲习班还提供了必要的信息，以制定以下方面的行动计划和原型：科学、技术、工程和数学教师发展手册;互动式网络存在，这将有助于促进这些社交网络的发展，并传播该手册和为该项目编写的其他材料;该项目的学术价值在于它在机构层面上明确了本科STEM学生应该知道和能够做什么以及他们的教师应该知道和能够做什么之间的联系。该项目采用以研究为基础的、真实世界的、主动学习的教学实践来构建教师发展活动，并正在开发一个研究组成部分，以确定这些战略的有效性，以及社交网络在促进和实现有意义的变革方面发挥的关键作用。该项目的更广泛的影响是，它将变革的轨迹从单一的STEM教师或部门转移到机构，州和国家层面。通过与区域机构网络（例如中西部联合学院和明尼苏达州立学院和大学系统）以及国家组织（例如美国学院大学协会&、本科生研究理事会、美国数学协会等）合作，该项目推动了对学生学习目标的讨论，超越了那些与个别班级或课程有关的讨论，让广泛的利益相关者参与制定这些目标的工作，并确保学生实现这些目标。它通过他们的学科协会利用教师的工作，给他们的支持，在他们的努力承担风险，并为他们的工作提供专业的认可。这种传播模式建立在埃弗雷特罗杰斯的工作基础上（《创新的传播》，2003年，自由出版社），他对创新传播的研究表明，建立和利用网络的价值，网络包括“分享共同意义、信仰和相互理解”的人，以及那些跨越“一个系统中社会上不同的个人”的人。

This faculty development project, by its emphasis on action at an institutional level, is enhancing the capabilities of groups of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty on over 1,200 campuses to strengthen undergraduate student learning. Building from the current base of 642 campuses that have been actively engaged with PKAL over the past five years, this project is doubling the number of colleges and universities actively working to develop STEM faculty so as to strengthen student learning. Activities include a series of workshops and events designed to help build and expand the community of professional organizations, universities and colleges, and faculty engaged in promoting excellence in undergraduate education in STEM. In addition to proceedings focusing on effective ways to change campus and departmental approaches to undergraduate education, this series of workshops is providing the information necessary to build action plans and prototypes for: a STEM Faculty Development Handbook; an interactive web presence that will serve to foster the development of these social networks and to disseminate the Handbook and other materials developed for the project; and a research agenda for following the course of change on campuses and determining effective change agents.The intellectual merit of this project is its explicit connection at the institutional level between what undergraduate STEM students should know and be able to do and what their faculty should know and be able to do. The project adapts research-based, real-world, active-learning pedagogical practices in constructing faculty development activities and is developing a research component that seeks to determine the effectiveness of these strategies, and the critical role that social networks play in promoting and achieving meaningful change. The broader impact of this project is that it moves the locus of transformative change from the single STEM faculty member or department to the institutional, state, and national level. By partnering with regional institutional networks, such as the Associated Colleges of the Midwest and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, as well as with national organizations, such as the Association of American Colleges & Universities, the Council on Undergraduate Research, the Mathematical Association of America, and others, the project pushes discussions of goals for student learning beyond those concerned with individual classes or courses of study, involving a wide range of stakeholders in the work of setting these goals and ensuring that students achieve them. It leverages the work of faculty members through their disciplinary societies, giving them the support to take risks in their efforts and providing professional recognition for their work. This model of diffusion builds on the work of Everett Rogers (Diffusion of Innovations, 2003, Free Press) whose research on the diffusion of innovations indicates the value of building and leveraging networks that include people who "share common meanings, beliefs, and mutual understandings" and those that span "sets of socially dissimilar individuals in a system".