Fostering A Community of Scholarship Among Community College STEM Faculty Through Support for Discipline Based Education Research

基于网络的教育研究（DBER）近年来发展迅速。DBER学者所做的大部分工作是在四年制大学的课堂上进行应用研究，本科生注册课程学分。许多四年制机构已经接受DBER作为教师专业知识的专业领域。与此同时，至少有一半的学生在较低的师级STEM学科课程就读于社区学院。许多学生谁开始大学作为STEM专业不成功，在较低的司STEM课程，并无法继续他们的STEM学习作为大三和大四在上师课程在4年制院校。STEM专业大一和大二学生的学习困难通常至少在社区大学和四年制大学一样大。进入社区大学的学生有非常不同的背景，这意味着社区大学教师面临的教学挑战是多方面的，有时是独特的。虽然DBER学者能够帮助改善低年级STEM课程的设计，但大多数DBER研究都不是由社区学院的教师进行的，尽管这些学院对国家高等教育系统很重要。因此，最好能找到一些关于学生如何在社区学院系统内学习STEM的专业知识。这就是这个项目的目标。该项目将开始解决这一不平衡问题，为来自中西部中部三所社区学院的18名社区学院教员提供基于学科的教育研究方面的学术培训：约翰逊县社区学院、大都会社区学院和堪萨斯城社区学院。这些社区学院的领导层支持这一计划，为STEM学科的教师提供强化培训。将鼓励参与者在夏季通过课程发布和支付酬金参与。几年后，这些新的DBER学者可能处于领导地位，以帮助改变他们机构的教学。这项探索性的设计补助金将试图确定这一过程是否可以在社区学院扎根，并成为一种有效的方法，将学生学习的深层知识扩展到社区学院雇用的其他STEM教师。

Discipline-based education research (DBER) has been growing rapidly in recent years. Much of the work undertaken by DBER scholars is applied research in live classrooms in four-year institutions with undergraduate students enrolled for course credit. Many four-year institutions have embraced DBER as a specialty area of expertise for faculty members. Meanwhile, at least half of the students taking courses in STEM disciplines at the lower division level are enrolled in community colleges. Many students who begin college as STEM majors do not succeed in lower division STEM coursework and are unable to continue their STEM studies as juniors and seniors in upper division courses in 4-year institutions. The learning difficulties that STEM majors have as freshmen and sophomores are typically at least as great in community colleges as they are in four-year institutions. Students entering community colleges have very diverse backgrounds and this means the teaching challenges faced by instructors in community colleges are manifold and sometimes unique. Although DBER scholars are able to help improve the design of lower division STEM courses, most DBER research has not been conducted by faculty members teaching in community colleges despite the importance of these colleges to the nation's higher education system. Consequently, it would be ideal to locate some expertise about how students learn STEM within the community college system. That is the goal of this project. The project will begin to address this imbalance by providing scholarly training in discipline based education research to 18 community college faculty members drawn from three community colleges in the central Midwest: Johnson County Community College, Metropolitan Community College, and Kansas City Community College. The leadership in these community colleges is supportive of this plan to provide intensive training to faculty teaching in STEM disciplines. Participants will be encouraged to participate through course releases and payment honoraria during the summertime. After several years, these new DBER scholars may be in leadership positions to help transform teaching in their institutions. This exploratory design grant will attempt to determine whether this process can take root in community colleges and be an efficient method for expanding deep knowledge about student learning to the other STEM faculty employed in community colleges.