Improving Undergraduate Student Persistence, Performance, and Perspectives in Online STEM Courses via a Community of Inquiry and Decreasing Students' Cognitive Load

本项目旨在通过设计和研究一个改进STEM课程在线讨论论坛的试点项目，为国家在高质量本科STEM教育方面的利益服务。该项目的总体目标是提高学生在在线STEM课程中的表现和坚持度，同时改善他们对STEM本身的态度。为了实现这一目标，该项目侧重于引入减少外部认知负荷的实践，同时也提高教育者的教学和社会存在，以及学生的社会和认知存在。该项目将研究一个具体的实践：一个使用讨论论坛和其他在线组件来最小化非相关技术复杂性的师生学习社区。该项目旨在为创建一个富有成效的在线学习社区提供指导方针，该社区不需要与预期学习无关的额外努力。该项目将提供专业发展，以支持教师实施指导方针。预计该指南可以转移到其他在线STEM课程。这些项目关于学生保留、坚持和对STEM的态度的数据将为在线STEM学习的进一步研究提供基础。该项目的目标是积极影响学生在异步在线STEM课程中的持久性、表现和观点。它希望通过支持学习社区来减轻外来认知负荷的影响。为此，该项目将设计和测试一个试点项目，将探究社区框架的组成部分注入到异步课程讨论中，包括主题专家和教学设计师重新设计讨论提示、规则和指导的最佳实践。试点项目将使用现有的机构结构来支持重新设计，并为教师提供相关的专业发展。在一项混合方法的研究中，将收集有关学生学业成功（课程成绩、讨论成绩单分析）、坚持（退学率）和观点（STEM态度、认知负荷和探究社区的调查）的信息。这些数据将得到焦点小组访谈结果的补充。该项目旨在为异步在线STEM课程生成一个探究社区-认知负荷框架，通过探究社区促进社会、教学和认知存在，从而支持学生的成果，同时减轻与学科学习脱节的认知负荷。该框架可以转移和扩展到其他异步在线STEM课程。通过确定在线STEM课程持续和保留的原因，该项目希望为进一步研究改善在线STEM课程学生成绩的干预措施奠定基础。NSF IUSE:EHR计划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 in high-quality undergraduate STEM education by designing and studying a pilot program to improve online discussion forums in STEM courses. The overall goal of the project is to improve students’ performance and persistence in online STEM courses, while simultaneously improving their attitudes toward STEM itself. To achieve this goal, the project focuses on introducing practices that reduce extraneous cognitive load, while also improving educators’ instructional and social presence, and students’ social and cognitive presence. The project will study a specific practice: a faculty-student learning community that uses discussion forums and other online components to minimize non-relevant technical complexity. The project intends to produce guidelines for creating a productive online learning community that does not require additional effort that is unrelated to the intended learning. The project will provide professional development to support instructors’ implementation of the guidelines. It is anticipated that the guidelines may be transferable to other online STEM courses. The projects’ data about student retention, persistence, and attitudes toward STEM will provide a base for additional research on online STEM learning. The goal of the project is to positively impact student persistence, performance, and perspectives in asynchronous online STEM courses. It expects to do to by supporting learning communities in ways that mitigate the impacts of extraneous cognitive load. To this end, the project will design and test a pilot program for infusing the components of the Community of Inquiry framework into asynchronous course discussions, including a best practices redesign of the discussion prompts, rubrics, and instructions by subject matter experts and instructional designers. The pilot program will use existing institutional structures to support the redesign and to provide faculty with the related professional development. In a mixed-methods research study, information will be collected about students’ academic success (course grades, discussion transcript analysis), persistence (withdrawal rate), and perspectives (surveys on STEM attitudes, cognitive load, and community of inquiry). These data will be complemented by results from focus group interviews. The project intends to generate a Community of Inquiry – Cognitive Load framework for asynchronous online STEM courses that supports student outcomes by promoting social, teaching, and cognitive presences via the Community of Inquiry, while mitigating cognitive load that is disconnected from disciplinary learning. The framework may be transferrable and scalable to other asynchronous online STEM courses. By identifying reasons for persistence and retention in online STEM courses, the project expects to lay the foundation for further research on interventions that improve student outcomes in online STEM courses. The NSF IUSE:EHR Program 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.