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The instructional practices used in introductory college courses often differ dramatically from those used in high school courses, and dissatisfaction with these practices is cited by students as a prominent reason for leaving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. To better characterize the transition to college course work, we investigated the extent to which incoming expectations of course activities differ based on student demographic characteristics, as well as how these expectations align with what students will experience. We surveyed more than 1500 undergraduate students in large introductory STEM courses at three research-intensive institutions during the first week of classes about their expectations regarding how class time would be spent in their courses. We found that first-generation and first-semester students predict less lecture than their peers and that class size had the largest effect on student predictions. We also collected classroom observation data from the courses and found that students generally underpredicted the amount of lecture observed in class. This misalignment between student predictions and experiences, especially for first-generation and first-semester college students and students enrolled in large- and medium-size classes, has implications for instructors and universities as they design curricula for introductory STEM courses with explicit retention goals.
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Vignette #2: Making a Switch to In-Class Activities in the Biochemistry Classroom
Active learning strategies aim to increase student critical thinking and engagement. In this article I describe my biochemistry classroom switch from lecture-only to half lecture and half in-class activities, inspired by Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL). Students in a first semester biochemistry course maintained the same ACS exam scores at the end of the course, continued to rate the course and its instruction highly, and class attendance significantly increased after the change in pedagogy. This format was also implemented in a second semester biochemistry course during a course redesign. The flexibility of in-class activities allowed an iterative addition of a bioinformatics themed course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE). The Biochemistry II students report learning practical skills that are likely to benefit them in the future.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1656407
- PAR ID:
- 10130552
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACS symposium series
- Volume:
- 1337
- ISSN:
- 0097-6156
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 275-290
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1021/bk-2019-1337
