Enhancing Durable and Efficient Student Learning in Undergraduate Gateway STEM Courses

本项目旨在通过应用学习研究来帮助大学生学习和记忆基础科学概念，为国家利益服务。在STEM学科中，学生必须能够在课程结束几个月后记住和使用他们在入门课程中学到的知识。这种知识的持久性使学生能够在从入门课程转向更高级的课程时建立一个累积的知识库。因此，STEM入门课程的教师面临一个主要问题：他们如何帮助学生学习关键概念，以便他们记住并在未来使用这些知识？当考虑到STEM学生需要学习的信息量时，这个问题就更加棘手了。如果学生要学习和记住所有重要的内容，他们必须尽可能有效地利用他们的学习时间。为了帮助教师和学生应对这些挑战，本开发和实施（一级）提案（参与学生学习跟踪）将评估基于网络的学习工具。这个工具适用于研究人们如何形成长期记忆，并将被化学、生物和物理等入门课程的学生使用。每隔一段时间，该工具将测试学生的基本概念，并对他们的表现提供反馈。该项目希望通过提供多种记忆、复习和重新学习基础概念的机会，该工具将提高学生学习的效率和持久性。这种回顾反馈的方法是基于简单，但强大的学习任务。因此，它可以用于许多STEM课程的广泛内容。因此，该项目有可能提高学生在许多STEM学科的成功。该项目的具体目标是实验评估：1)使用检索-监测-反馈（RMF）方法提高学生在入门STEM课程中高风险考试成绩的有效性；2) RMF方法对远端结果的性能增强程度；3)使用RMF方法的复习课程对后续学期高级课程考试成绩的提高程度。生物、化学和物理的基本概念将被确定，并且基于网络的工具将促使学生每周学习两次课程概念。在每次学习期间，基于网络的工具将提示学生检索目标概念，并提供反馈，使学生能够准确地为他们的回答打分，并重新学习正确的答案。学生将继续接受测试，直到他们能够正确地检索每个概念的含义，然后他们将在随后的课程中重复这一过程来复习或重新学习相同的概念。基于对学习的实验室研究，我们知道这种连续的再学习可以产生持久的科学概念学习。因此，该项目对社会的一个主要好处是，它将评估其在提高学生在实验室之外的成就方面的功效，特别是在生物、化学和物理等本科科学课程的现实环境中。本项目由美国国家科学基金会改善本科STEM教育计划：教育与人力资源项目支持，该项目支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划支持有前途的实践和工具的创建，探索和实施。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 aims to serve the national interest by applying learning research to help undergraduate students learn and remember foundational scientific concepts. In STEM disciplines, students must be able to remember and use what they learned in introductory courses months after those courses have ended. This durability of knowledge enables students to build a cumulative knowledge base as they move from introductory classes to more advanced coursework. Accordingly, instructors in introductory STEM courses face a major problem: how can they help their students learn key concepts so that they remember and can use this knowledge in the future? The problem is even more overwhelming when one considers the amount of information that STEM students are expected to learn. If students are to learn and remember all the important content, they must use their study time as efficiently as possible. To help instructors and students meet these challenges, this Development and Implementation (Level I) proposal (Engaged Student Learning Track) will evaluate a web-based learning tool. This tool applies research about how people make long-term memories and will be used by students in gateway courses in chemistry, biology, and physics. At intervals, the tool will quiz students about foundational concepts and provide feedback on their performance. The project expects that, by providing multiple opportunities to remember, review, and relearn foundational concepts, the tool will improve the efficiency and durability of students' learning. This review-feedback method is based on simple, but powerful learning tasks. As a result, it could be used for a broad range of content across many STEM courses. Thus, this project has the potential to enhance student success in many STEM disciplines. The specific objectives of this project are to experimentally evaluate: 1) the efficacy of using a Retrieval-Monitoring-Feedback (RMF) method to improve student achievement on high-stakes exams in gateway STEM courses; 2) the degree to which the RMF method enhances performance on distal outcomes; and 3) the degree to which a refresher session using the RMF method enhances course exam performance in advanced courses in the subsequent semester. Fundamental concepts in biology, chemistry, and physics will be identified, and the web-based tool will prompt students to study the course concepts twice a week. During each study session, the web-based tool will prompt students to retrieve the targeted concepts and will provide feedback that allows students to accurately score their responses and to relearn the correct answers. Students will continue being quizzed until they can correctly retrieve the meaning of each concept, and then they will repeat this procedure to review or relearn the same concepts in subsequent sessions. Based on laboratory studies of learning, it is known that such successive relearning can produce durable learning of science concepts. Thus, a major benefit of the project to society is that it will evaluate its efficacy for boosting students' achievement outside of the laboratory, specifically in the real-world context of undergraduate science courses in biology, chemistry, and physics. This project is supported by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.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.