An official website of the United States government
Abstract Undergraduate STEM lecture courses enroll hundreds who must master declarative, conceptual, and applied learning objectives. To support them, instructors have turned to active learning designs that require students to engage inself-regulated learning(SRL). Undergraduates struggle with SRL, and universities provide courses, workshops, and digital training to scaffold SRL skill development and enactment. We examined two theory-aligned designs of digital skill trainings that scaffold SRL and how students’ demonstration of metacognitive knowledge of learning skills predicted exam performance in biology courses where training took place. In Study 1, students’ (n = 49) responses to training activities were scored for quality and summed by training topic and level of understanding. Behavioral and environmental regulation knowledge predicted midterm and final exam grades; knowledge of SRL processes did not. Declarative and conceptual levels of skill-mastery predicted exam performance; application-level knowledge did not. When modeled by topic at each level of understanding, declarative knowledge of behavioral and environmental regulation and conceptual knowledge of cognitive strategies predicted final exam performance. In Study 2 (n = 62), knowledge demonstrated during a redesigned video-based multimedia version of behavioral and environmental regulation again predicted biology exam performance. Across studies, performance on training activities designed in alignment with skill-training models predicted course performances and predictions were sustained in a redesign prioritizing learning efficiency. Training learners’ SRL skills –and specifically cognitive strategies and environmental regulation– benefited their later biology course performances across studies, which demonstrate the value of providing brief, digital activities to develop learning skills. Ongoing refinement to materials designed to develop metacognitive processing and learners’ ability to apply skills in new contexts can increase benefits.
more »
« less
Triage and Recovery of STEM Laboratory Skills
ABSTRACT The global COVID-19 pandemic left universities with few options but to turn to remote learning. With much effort, STEM courses made this change in modality; however, many laboratory skills, such as measurement and handling equipment, are more difficult to teach in an online learning environment. A cohort of instructors who are part of the NSF RCN-UBE funded Sustainable, Transformative Engagement across a Multi-Institution/Multidisciplinary STEM (STEM 2 ) Network (a working group of faculty from two community colleges and three 4-year universities) analyzed introductory biology and chemistry courses to identify essential laboratory skills that students will need in advanced courses. Seven essential laboratory proficiencies were derived from reviewing disciplinary guiding documents such as AAAS’s Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education, the American Society for Microbiology’s Recommended Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Microbiology Education , and the American Chemical Society’s Guidelines for Chemistry : data analysis, scientific writing, proper handling and disposal of laboratory materials, discipline-specific techniques, measurement, lab safety and personal protective equipment, and interpersonal and collaborative skills. Our analysis has determined that some of these skills are difficult to develop in a remote online setting but could be recovered with appropriate interventions. Skill recovery procedures suggested are a skills “boot camp,” department and college coordinated club events, and a triage course. The authors recommend that one of these three recovery mechanisms be offered to bridge this skill gap and better prepare STEM students for upper-level science courses and the real world.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1919614
- PAR ID:
- 10285875
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education
- Volume:
- 22
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1935-7877
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Universities across the U.S. have moved to various virtual teaching models in response to the health threats caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. When converting to an online-only mode, STEM and related fields face additional challenges over the lab portion of courses because laboratory courses and activelearning projects frequently require specialized equipment and manual dexterity interactions. In this paper, we report the results of a study on students’ perceptions about online learning during the initial phase of the pandemic at a public university in California, U.S. We focus on the overall reaction to the rapid conversion to online, the negative impressions created, “structural” concerns that would be difficult to mitigate, concerns readily amenable to mitigation, and side effects such as impact on equity. Twenty-five recommendations for those factors deemed improvable are provided.more » « less
-
Undergraduate science students who volunteer within a research laboratory group, or participate in funded research opportunities, in general are those who have the opportunity to engage in authentic research. In this article, we report the findings from two different iterations of a semester-long collaboration between a biology faculty member and a science education faculty member at a major research institution in the Southeastern United States. Specifically, the faculty members designed an ecology laboratory course for upper-level undergraduate students (primarily biology majors) where they would engage in an original and highly authentic ecological research project. The goal of this course was to have students explicitly learn about the nature of science (NOS), and authentic scientific practices such as inquiry and experimentation in the context of their own research. In the second year of the course, the global COVID-19 pandemic forced us to modify our approach to accomplish the same goals, but now in a remote and online format. Using questionnaires, concept inventories, and semi-structured interviews, the impact of the course on students’ understandings of NOS, inquiry, and experimentation, in addition to their perspectives on the experience within the course compared to prior laboratory coursework, was investigated. We found that students showed modest gains in each of the aforementioned desirable outcomes. These gains were generally comparable in both face-to-face and remote course settings. Additionally, students shared with us their preference for authentic laboratory work as compared with the typical laboratory work with its given research question and step-by-step instructions. Our research demonstrates what is possible in both face-to-face and remote undergraduate laboratory courses in biology and the positive impact that was observed in our students. We hope it serves as a model for other scientists and science educators as they collaborate to design authentic research-based coursework for undergraduate biology students.more » « less
-
Abstract Efforts to discourage academic misconduct in online learning environments frequently include the use of remote proctoring services. While these services are relatively commonplace in undergraduate science courses, there are open questions about students’ remote assessment environments and their concerns related to remote proctoring services. Using a survey distributed to 11 undergraduate science courses engaging in remote instruction at three American, public, research-focused institutions during the spring of 2021, we found that the majority of undergraduate students reported testing in suboptimal environments. Students’ concerns about remote proctoring services were closely tied to technological difficulties, fear of being wrongfully accused of cheating, and negative impacts on mental health. Our results suggest that remote proctoring services can create and perpetuate inequitable assessment environments for students, and additional research is required to understand the efficacy of their intended purpose to prevent cheating. We also advocate for continued conversations about the broader social and institutional conditions that can pressure students into cheating. While changes to academic culture are difficult, these conversations are necessary for higher education to remain relevant in an increasingly technological world.more » « less
-
There is currently little physics education literature examining thinking and learning in graduate education and even less literature characterizing problem solving among physics graduate students despite this being an essential professional skill for physicists. Given reports of discrepancies between physics problem solving in the undergraduate classroom and “real-world” problem solving, we sought to investigate whether this discrepancy exists at the graduate level. We first investigate the problem-solving skills present in first-year graduate physics assignments. A recent framework that characterizes problem solving as decisions-to-be-made was used. Assignments were taken from the four core courses of one academic year at one research-intensive university and coded by two researchers. We found that only 4 of the 29 decisions in the framework were present in most of the assignments. We then interviewed 11 instructors from 3 universities and asked which decisions they expected of first-year graduate students. Eleven decisions were expected by eight or more of the participants, but only four of these decisions were commonly practiced on assignments. Therefore, there seems to be a mismatch between instructor expectations and practice of problem solving on assignments. This suggests that graduate physics courses may not be aligned with the problem-solving skills that physics graduate students will need in their research or future careers. Published by the American Physical Society2025more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v22i1.2565
