RCN-UBE: Networking STEM Initiatives To Enhance (NSITE) Adoption of Evidence-Based Practices

该项目将建立一个网络，使国家STEM教育改革倡议能够联合起来，加快在中学后STEM教育中采用有效的教学实践，并更深入地了解组织如何变化。目前，大学STEM教育工作者很少接受过正式的教学培训。正因如此，许多学校沿用以往的教学方式，采用被动的授课方式，导致那些进入大学宣布主修STEM专业的学生，尤其是那些来自代表性不足群体的学生，保留率和成功率都很低。因此，由此产生的STEM劳动力无法满足当前对这些专业人员的需求，也不能代表其所服务的社会的多样性。在过去十年中，出现了许多解决这一问题的倡议，并在传播认识和一些解决办法方面取得了一些进展。虽然STEM教育正在发生变化，但其速度慢于不断变化的社会需求。这个新的网络将允许现有的倡议分享有效的战略，并联合起来测试新的战略，以提高STEM教育改革的进展速度，提高STEM专业所有学生的成功率和保留率。为了满足未来劳动力的需求，我们需要留住更多、更多样化的STEM本科生。提高留校率，特别是提高代表性不足群体的参与度的一个障碍是，中学后STEM教育的传播模式继续占主导地位，这已成为一个明显的社会正义问题。为了加快在高等生命科学教育中采用循证实践，本提案的目标是在从生命科学开始的突出的教育转型努力之间建立联系，促进互动，提高每项倡议的效率。采用三阶段网络改进社区格式，将使用四次面对面和多次虚拟会议的组合来提高知识和意识，促进沟通并促进协调行动，以确定和实施共同解决方案，以应对共同挑战。十个杰出的生命科学计划将服务于成千上万的教育工作者并影响成千上万的学生，这些计划将建立关系，分析共同的挑战，确定变革的步骤，并随后测试变革以收集和共享数据。最后一个阶段将着重于基于对组织变革策略的更深入理解来建立规模努力的能力。该项目将通过发展网络来提高相关举措的影响，从而增加STEM劳动力的数量和多样化，这些举措的共同使命是在中学后STEM教育中增加循证教学的采用，并通过增加我们对有效组织变革战略的了解来提高更广泛的改革努力的影响。该项目由生物基础设施司生物科学理事会和本科教育司教育和人力资源理事会共同资助，作为其应对《本科生物学教育的愿景与变革：行动呼吁》（http://visionandchange/finalreport/）所提出的挑战的努力的一部分。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will establish a network that allows national STEM education reform initiatives to join forces to speed adoption of effective teaching practices in post-secondary STEM education and to provide a deeper understanding of how organizations change. At present, college STEM educators rarely have formal training in teaching. As such, many teach the way they were taught using a passive, lecture method that leads to low retention and success rates for students who enter college declaring STEM majors, especially those from under-represented groups. The resulting STEM workforce is therefore unable to meet the current demand for those professionals and does not represent the diversity of the society it serves. Over the past decade many initiatives have emerged to address this issue and have made some progress in spreading awareness and some solutions. While STEM education is changing, the pace is slower than the shifting societal demands. This new network will allow established initiatives to share effective strategies and to join forces testing new strategies to increase the rate of progress in STEM education reform and increase the success and retention of all students in STEM majors. To meet the needs of the future workforce, we need to retain a larger and more diverse population of STEM undergraduates. A barrier to increasing retention, specifically increasing participation by under-represented groups, is the continued predominance of a transmission model of post-secondary STEM education which has become a marked issue of social justice. To speed adoption of evidence-based practices in post-secondary life sciences education, the goal of this proposal is to build connections between prominent education transformation efforts, starting in the life sciences, to foster interactions that increase the efficacy of each initiative. Using a three-phased Networked Improvement Communities format, a combination of four in-person and multiple virtual meetings will be used to improve knowledge and awareness, foster communication and facilitate coordinated action to identify and implement common solutions to move the needle on common challenges. Ten prominent life sciences initiatives serving thousands of educators and impacting hundreds of thousands of students will build relationships, analyze common challenges, identify steps for change, and subsequently test changes to collect and share data. The last phase will focus on building capacity to scale efforts based upon a deeper understanding of organizational change strategies. This project will contribute to increasing and diversifying the STEM workforce by growing a network to enhance the impact of the initiatives involved whose common mission is to increase adoption of evidence-based teaching in post-secondary STEM education, and improving the impact of a broader community of reform efforts by increasing our knowledge of effective organizational change strategies. This project is being jointly funded by the Directorate for Biological Sciences, Division of Biological Infrastructure, and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Undergraduate Education as part of their efforts to address the challenges posed in Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/).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.