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1. Access to Online Formative Assessments in Lower-Division Undergraduate Biology Courses: Investigating Barriers to Student Engagement

   https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.22-05-0098  

   Upchurch, Allison M.; Kirkwood-Watts, Dana L.; Brazeal, Kathleen R.; Wheeler, Lorey A.; Couch, Brian A.; Johnson, Gabrielle B.; Spier, Sarah K. (December 2022, CBE—Life Sciences Education)

   Coffman, Clark (Ed.)

   Instructors use a variety of online formative assessment (FA) activities to support learning outside class. Previous studies have revealed barriers for students in online courses, but little is known about the barriers students experience when completing online FA assignments. Understanding these barriers to access is critical to fostering more inclusive learning for all students. Using a framework from previous work in online learning, we examined student perceptions of online FA access with respect to five barrier categories: technical resources, instructor organization, social interactions, personal engagement, and learning environment. We developed and administered a survey to more than 1200 undergraduate biology students at 2-year and 4-year institutions. Students responded to statements using Likert scales and open-ended prompts. Statistical models indicated differences in access across the barrier categories and revealed that demographic characteristics were associated with certain barrier categories. Furthermore, technical resources, instructor organization, and personal engagement barriers were associated with lower course performance. In open-ended responses, students most frequently suggested that changes to scheduling logistics, course delivery, and FA format would improve their online FA experience. We discuss how these findings and student suggestions can inform instruction, particularly how instructors can alter their FA characteristics to better suit their student populations. 

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2. Investigating dimensions of instructor trust using the words of undergraduate STEM students

   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1617067  

   Zhang, Kathy; Gill, Julia C; Zhang, Tong; Crowley, Lia; Bennie, Juliette; Wagner, Henry; Bauer, Melanie; Hanauer, David; Chen, Xinnian; Graham, Mark J (July 2025, Frontiers in Education)

   Recent work has shown that student trust in their instructor is a key moderator of STEM student buy-in to evidence-based teaching practices (EBTs), enhancing positive student outcomes such as performance, engagement, and persistence. Although trust in instructor has been previously operationalized in related settings, a systematic classification of how undergraduate STEM students perceive trustworthiness in their instructors remains to be developed. Moreover, previous operationalizations impose a structure that often includes distinct domains, such as cognitive and affective trust, that have yet to be empirically tested in the undergraduate STEM context. MethodsTo address this gap, we engage in a multi-step qualitative approach to unify existing definitions of trust from the literature and analyze structured interviews with 57 students enrolled in undergraduate STEM classes who were asked to describe a trusted instructor. Through thematic analysis, we propose that characteristics of a trustworthy instructor can be classified into three domains. We then assess the validity of the three-domain model both qualitatively and quantitatively. First, we examine student responses to determine how traits from different domains are mentioned together. Second, we use a process-model approach to instrument design that leverages our qualitative interview codebook to develop a survey that measures student trust. We performed an exploratory factor analysis on survey responses to quantitatively test the construct validity of our proposed three-domain trust model. Results and discussionWe identified 28 instructor traits that students perceived as trustworthy, categorized into cognitive, affective, and relational domains. Within student responses, we found that there was a high degree of interconnectedness between traits in the cognitive and relational domains. When we assessed the construct validity of the three-factor model using survey responses, we found that a three-factor model did not adequately capture the underlying latent structure. Our findings align with recent calls to both closely examine long-held assumptions of trust dimensionality and to develop context-specific trust measurements. The work presented here can inform the development of a reliable measure of student trust within undergraduate STEM student environments and ultimately improve our understanding of how instructors can best leverage the effectiveness of EBTs for positive student learning outcomes. 

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3. Impact of changing physical learning space on GTA and student behaviors

   https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2020.pr.Doty  

   Doty, Constance M.; Wan, Tong; Geraets, Ashley A.; Nix, Christopher A.; Saitta, Erin K.; Chini, Jacquelyn J. (January 2020, Physics Education Research Conference 2020)

   null (Ed.)

   We investigated how changing the physical classroom impacted graduate teaching assistant (GTA) and student behaviors in tutorial sections of an introductory algebra-based physics sequence. Using a modified version of the Laboratory Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (LOPUS), we conducted 35 observations over two semesters for seven GTAs who taught in different styles of classrooms (i.e., active learning classrooms and traditional classrooms). We found that both GTAs and students changed behaviors in response to a change from an active learning classroom to a traditional classroom. GTAs were found to be less interactive with student groups and to lecture at the whiteboard more frequently. Correspondingly, student behaviors changed as students asked fewer questions during one-on-one interactions. These findings suggest that the instructional capacity framework, which typically focuses on interactions between instructors, students and instructional materials, should also include interactions with the learning space. We suggest administrators and departments consider the impact of changing to a traditional classroom when implementing student-centered instruction and emphasize how to use classroom space in GTA professional development. 

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4. “What Will I Experience in My College STEM Courses?” An Investigation of Student Predictions about Instructional Practices in Introductory Courses

   https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.19-05-0084  

   Meaders, Clara L.; Toth, Emma S.; Lane, A. Kelly; Shuman, J. Kenny; Couch, Brian A.; Stains, Marilyne; Stetzer, MacKenzie R.; Vinson, Erin; Smith, Michelle K.; Offerdahl, Erika (December 2019, CBE—Life Sciences Education)

   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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5. Look Who's Talking: Teaching and Discourse Practices across Discipline, Position, Experience, and Class Size in STEM College Classrooms

   https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biab077  

   Alkhouri, Jourjina Subih; Donham, Cristine; Pusey, Téa S; Signorini, Adriana; Stivers, Alexander H; Kranzfelder, Petra (August 2021, BioScience)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Students are more likely to learn in college science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) classrooms when instructors use teacher discourse moves (TDMs) that encourage student engagement and learning. However, although teaching practices are well studied, TDMs are not well understood in college STEM classrooms. In STEM courses at a minority-serving institution (MSI; n = 74), we used two classroom observation protocols to investigate teaching practices and TDMs across disciplines, instructor types, years of teaching experience, and class size. We found that instructors guide students in active learning activities, but they use authoritative discourse approaches. In addition, chemistry instructors presented more than biology instructors. Also, teaching faculty had relatively high dialogic, interactive discourse, and neither years of faculty teaching experience nor class size had an impact on teaching practices or TDMs. Our results have implications for targeted teaching professional development efforts across instructor and course characteristics to improve STEM education at MSIs. 

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