Scaling cultures of collaboration: Evidence-based reform in portal STEM courses

该项目使用转型学习理论和变化免疫模型作为成立实践社区（cop）的理由，以改变伊利诺伊大学门户STEM课程的教学文化。对变化的免疫模型关注的是许多教学改革所带来的不适，这些改革使教师脱离了常规地向学生提供专业知识作为与学生互动的主要形式的角色。当同一位教师正在从事或代表他们的研究时，以展示他们专业知识的方式展示自己是很重要的。在许多情况下，这种不协调是改变研究型教师教学实践的障碍，因为教学实践要求他们承担促进者而不是专家的角色。因此，这个项目的核心理念是，门户课程的教学应该由教师共同拥有和创造，而不是个人独立教师的唯一领域。这一过程是通过围绕10个系的每个本科STEM学科建立实践社区（cop）来启动的，这些系位于两个学院——文理学院和工程学院。通过CoP过程，教学文化正在发生变化，因为教师正在适应以证据为基础的改革，并改变他们对门户课程的教学。这些门户课程在两所学院的十个系中每年招收超过17,000名学生，其中一些门户课程是校园内几乎所有STEM专业的必修课程。实践社区方法既在每个部门内运行，也在所有十个部门的总体水平上运行。每个CoP都在合作探索一个知识领域，通过将需要适应循证教学法的教师与已经支持这些教学法的教师联系起来，来支持改进实践的发展。cop提供了一种促进长期情境学习的组织结构，这种结构暴露并挑战了教师阻碍变革的隐性信念。cop还依赖于高水平的协作才能取得成功，并有效地传播隐性知识，这减少了新手的学习曲线，减少了冗余资源的创造或失败的重演，并促进了创造力。对cop的强调将进一步产生改革的共同所有权，对抗当前的个人主义教学文化，从而使改革制度化，以便在新教师被指派教授这些课程时将其用于门户课程。在一个大型评估团队和一个教学支持团队的推动下，cop正在参与一个从创新到评估的开发周期。评估小组正在使用定性（如学生态度）和定量（如成绩结果）两种措施向cop提供形成性和总结性反馈，这些措施反过来被用来改善教与学。此外，评价小组还在研究缔约方会议的运作，包括各小组作为缔约方会议运作的程度，并详细说明有效和不太有效的缔约方会议的特点。教学支持小组通过参加cop的每周会议和组织所有cop的每月聚会，为cop提供及时的培训。其余的警务司正在努力维持院长和部门主管自上而下的行政支持，以维持警务司自下而上的改革努力。

This project is using transformational learning theory and an Immunity-to-Change model as justification for forming Communities of Practice (CoPs) to change the teaching culture in gateway STEM courses at the University of Illinois. The Immunity to Change model focuses on the discomfort caused by the many teaching reforms that take the instructor out of the role of routinely providing expertise to the students as the dominant form of interaction with them. When the same instructors are working in or representing their research, it is important to present themselves in ways that demonstrate their expertise. This dissonance is a barrier to changing the teaching practices of research-active faculty in many instances because the teaching practices require them to take on the role of facilitator rather than expert. Hence, this project is based on the core idea that teaching in gateway courses should be jointly owned and created by the faculty, rather than being the sole province of individual, independent instructors. This process is being initiated through the formation of Communities of Practice (CoPs) around each undergraduate STEM discipline in ten departments, which are located in two colleges - Liberal Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering. Through the CoP process, the teaching culture is changing, as faculty are adapting evidenced-based reforms and changing their instruction in gateway courses. These gateway courses in ten departments in two colleges enroll over 17,000 students annually, and several of the gateway courses are required for nearly all STEM majors on campus. The Community of Practice approach is operating both within each department and also at the aggregate level across all ten departments. Each CoP is collaboratively exploring a domain of knowledge to support the development of improved practice by connecting faculty who need to adapt their teaching to evidence-based pedagogies with faculty whose beliefs already support those pedagogies. CoPs are providing an organizational structure that promotes long-term situated learning that is exposing and challenging instructors' tacit beliefs that impede change. CoPs also depend on high levels of collaboration for success and effectively spread tacit knowledge, which decreases the learning curve for novices, reduces creation of redundant resources or reenactments of failures, and promotes creativity. The emphasis on CoPs will further engender common ownership of the reforms, countering the current individualistic teaching culture, thereby institutionalizing the reforms so that they are used in the gateway courses as new faculty are assigned to teach them. CoPs are engaging in a development cycle of innovate to evaluate, facilitated by a large evaluation team and an instructional support team. The evaluation team is providing both formative and summative feedback to CoPs using both qualitative (e.g., student attitudes) and quantitative (e.g., performance outcomes) measures that are in turn being used to improve teaching and learning. In addition, the evaluation team is also studying the functioning of the CoPs, including the extent to which teams are operating as CoPs, and providing detailed descriptions of features of effective and less effective CoPs. The instructional support team is providing just-in-time training to the CoPs by attending their weekly meetings and organizing monthly gatherings for all CoPs. The remaining PIs are working to maintain the top-down administrative support from deans and department heads to sustain the bottom-up reform efforts of the CoPs.