Despite many studies confirming that active learning in STEM classrooms improves student outcomes, instructors;' adoption of active learning has been surprisingly slow. This work-in-progress paper describes our broader research study in which we compare the efficacy of a traditional active learning workshop (AL) and an extended version of this workshop that also specifically highlights instructor strategies to reduce resistance (AL+) on instructors' beliefs about and actual adoption of active learning in undergraduate STEM classrooms. Through a randomized control trial (RCT), we aim to understand the ways in which these workshops influence instructors' motivation to adopt and the actual use of active learning. This RCT involves instructors and students at a large number of institutions including two-year college, four-year college, and large research institutions in three regions of the country and strategies to reduce student resistance to active learning. We have developed and piloted three instruments, which allow for triangulation of classroom data: an instructor survey, a student survey, and a classroom observation protocol. This work-in-progress paper will cover the current progress of our research study and present our research instruments.
more »
« less
Promoting adoption of active learning and use of strategies to reduce student resistance to active learning
Abstract: Our research has identified strategies instructors can use to reduce student resistance to active learning, and we are developing a workshop intervention to change instructors’ motivation and behaviour related to adoption of active learning and of these strategies. We are using a randomized control trial to assess the impact of the workshop on instructors’ value, self-efficacy, and actual adoption of both active learning and the strategies to reduce resistance. In this paper, we describe our processes for recruiting workshop participants and for developing an instructor survey to assess the impact of the workshop.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1821488
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10112911
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Research in Engineering Education Symposium
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Despite many studies confirming that active learning in STEM classrooms improves student outcomes, instructors’ adoption of active learning has been surprisingly slow. This work-in-progress paper describes our broader research study in which we compare the efficacy of a traditional active learning workshop (AL) and an extended version of this workshop that also specifically highlights instructor strategies to reduce resistance (AL+) on instructors’ beliefs about and actual adoption of active learning in undergraduate STEM classrooms. Through a randomized control trial (RCT), we aim to understand the ways in which these workshops influence instructors’ motivation to adopt and the actual use of active learning. This RCT involves instructors and students at a large number of institutions including two-year college, four-year college, and large research institutions in three regions of the country and strategies to reduce student resistance to active learning. We have developed and piloted three instruments, which allow for triangulation of classroom data: an instructor survey, a student survey, and a classroom observation protocol. This work-in-progress paper will cover the current progress of our research study and present our research instruments.more » « less
-
Despite many studies confirming that active learning in STEM classrooms improves student outcomes, instructors’ adoption of active learning has been surprisingly slow. This work-in-progress paper describes our broader research study in which we compare the efficacy of a traditional active learning workshop (AL) and an extended version of this workshop that also specifically highlights instructor strategies to reduce resistance (AL+) on instructors’ beliefs about and actual adoption of active learning in undergraduate STEM classrooms. Through a randomized control trial (RCT), we aim to understand the ways in which these workshops influence instructors’ motivation to adopt and the actual use of active learning. This RCT involves instructors and students at a large number of institutions including two-year college, four-year college, and large research institutions in three regions of the country and strategies to reduce student resistance to active learning. We have developed and piloted three instruments, which allow for triangulation of classroom data: an instructor survey, a student survey, and a classroom observation protocol. This work-in-progress paper will cover the current progress of our research study and present our research instruments.more » « less
-
Wedeveloped an instructional development workshop for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) instructors in higher education to promote their adoption of active learning. Our workshop design was based on a proposed framework for motivating adult learners consisting of five elements: (1) expertise of presenters, (2) relevance of content, (3) choice in application, (4) praxis, and (5) group work. We assessed the participating instructors’ attitudes (i.e., motivation to use active learning and intentions and motivation to use strategies to reduce student resistance to active learning) immediately before and after the workshop and again five to six months later. We also assessed participants’ satisfaction with the workshop. Analyses of our data provided evidence of a change in participants’ motivation to use active learning and both their intentions and motivation to use strategies to reduce student resistance to active learning following the workshop. Our quantitative findings and thematic analysis of survey results support the use of the proposed framework for designing instructional development workshops for STEM faculty. The results also show short-term instructional development workshops can be effective and suggest caution in extrapolating immediate post-workshop assessment to the longer-term.more » « less
-
In this paper we provide an update in our research studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instructor development in classrooms. Our overarching goal is to expand the adoption of active learning in STEM classrooms. For this study, we created a workshop to educate STEM instructors on what active learning is and ways to implement it into their classrooms. Additionally, this workshop sought to provide instructors with evidence-based strategies that focused on reducing student resistance to active learning. This study used a conducted randomized control trial to investigate the impact of this workshop on: (1) how this workshop impacted STEM instructors’ attitudes towards using active learning, (2) their behaviors in using active learning, and (3) their use of strategies for reducing student resistance to active learning. We collected data from 173 instructors and 1676 students. This paper focuses on our preliminary results as well as next steps for the project. Thus far, we have analyzed the impact of the workshop on our instructor’s use of active learning, and the student responses to these changes.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
