Community-engaged Courseware for STEM Success at Two-year Colleges

该项目旨在通过将两年制大学教师纳入卡内基梅隆大学开放式学习计划（OLI）自适应课件的开发和改进来服务于国家利益，该课件将提高学生的学习成绩，同时降低广泛的入门STEM课程的成本。有证据表明，让更多的教育工作者和学生参与数据驱动的课件定制、改进和扩展过程，可以起到倍增器的作用，更好地将课件置于当地环境中，并与学习者的先前知识联系起来。受COVID启发的远程教学重点突出了主动、异步学习活动在改善学习方面的潜力，并使更多的教育工作者愿意利用这些类型的教育技术进行创新。该项目将建立在教育工作者与OLI合作的先前工作的基础上，并吸取了如何最好地支持教师将课件融入教学实践的经验教训。根据这些先前的调查结果，该项目计划将这些努力扩大到其他州的两年制。该项目计划让学生、教师和大学社区领导人参与进来，以了解围绕为服务不足的STEM学习者实施在线学习的政策方面的具体需求。该项目将涉及纽约和马里兰州16所两年制院校的教职员工，覆盖至少50个STEM教室，影响数千名学习者。该项目将通过采用、定制和学习者对公开进修学院课件的贡献，改善学习者在STEM网关课程中的成果。该项目将利用系统捕获的学习者互动和创作数据，并将使用通过LearnSphere广泛提供的分析方法，调查课件更改对目标学习人群结果的影响，同时通知教师对课件的迭代改进。具体目标包括改善这些活动的用户体验，更好地了解这些活动对STEM成功的影响，特别是对于传统上服务不足的成年STEM学习者。该项目将提供定制和学习者来源的工具，扩展开放STEM自适应课件内容，了解教育技术创新政策格局，并为全国范围内的扩展提供政策建议。该项目将提供参加公开进修学院专业发展讲习班的机会;收集必要的成果和人口数据;并与公开进修学院研究人员合作进行分析。该项目将创建工具和方法，以支持教师参与数据驱动的定制，并提供学生对学习材料和见解的更多贡献。卡内基梅隆大学将与纽约的州立大学（SUNY）和马里兰州社区学院和领导人合作，接触广泛和多样化的人群。包括哈福德（马里兰州）和拿骚（纽约州）社区学院在内的主要实施合作伙伴将推动核心研究工作，并促进多个STEM领域的教师招聘。与这些努力相结合，来自全州组织SUNY OER Services和马里兰州开源教科书计划的领导人将通过现有的赠款和外展计划，帮助在各自的州立社区学院社区更广泛地传播这些努力。美国国家科学基金会（NSF）的项目描述“在两年制高等教育机构中推进本科STEM教育的创新和影响”（Advancing Innovation and Impact in Undergraduate STEM Education at Two-year Institutions of Higher Education），旨在支持旨在通过创新和高影响力的循证实践来改善STEM教育的项目。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智力价值和更广泛的影响力审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by integrating two-year college instructors into the development and improvement of Carnegie Mellon University’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI) adaptive courseware that will improve student outcomes while reducing the cost for a broad range of gateway STEM courses. Evidence suggests that engaging a larger population of educators and students in the process of data-driven customization, improvement, and expansion of the courseware can act as a multiplier, better situating courseware in the local context and connecting with learners’ prior knowledge. The COVID-inspired pivot to remote instruction has highlighted the potential of active, asynchronous learning activities to improve learning, and has left a larger population of educators open to innovating with these types of educational technologies. The project will build on prior work where educators have engaged with OLI, and lessons were learned on how to best support faculty with integrating courseware into their instructional practice. Based on these prior findings, the project plans to expand these efforts to two-year systems in other states. The project plans to engage students, instructors, and college community leaders to understand the specific needs in terms of policy around the implementation of online learning for underserved STEM learners at scale. This project will involve faculty and staff at 16 two-year institutions in New York and Maryland, reaching at least 50 STEM classrooms, and impacting thousands of learners. The project will improve outcomes for learners in STEM gateway courses through adoption, customization, and learner-contributions to OLI courseware. The project will leverage learner-interaction and authoring data that is captured by the system, and will use analytic methods, made widely available via LearnSphere, to investigate the impact of courseware changes on outcomes for targeted learning populations while simultaneously informing the iterative improvement of courseware by faculty. Specific goals include improving the user experience for these activities, better understanding the impact of these activities on STEM success, especially with regard to traditionally underserved and adult STEM learners. The project will provide tools for customization and learner sourcing, expand open STEM adaptive courseware content, understand the ed-tech innovation policy landscape, and produce policy recommendations for scaling nationally. The project will provide access to OLI professional development (PD) workshops; collecting necessary outcome and demographic data; and collaborating with OLI researchers on analysis. The project will create tools and methods to support faculty to engage in data-driven customization and provide expanded contributions from students to learning materials and insights. Carnegie Mellon University will partner with State University of New York (SUNY) and Maryland community colleges and leaders reaching broad and diverse populations. Lead implementation partners including Harford (MD) and Nassau (NY) Community Colleges will drive core research efforts and facilitate recruitment of faculty in multiple STEM domains. In conjunction with these efforts, leaders from state-wide organizations SUNY OER Services and the Maryland Open Source Textbook initiative will help to disseminate these efforts more broadly throughout their respective state community college communities via existing grant and outreach programs. The NSF program description on Advancing Innovation and Impact in Undergraduate STEM Education at Two-year Institutions of Higher Education supports projects seeking to improve STEM education using innovative and high-impact practices that are evidence-based.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.