More Like this

1. Where’s My Whiteboard? The Challenge of Moving Active-learning Mathematics Classes Online

   Nelson, Jill K. ; Rosenberg, Jessica ; Fernandez, Kathryn ; Shank, Julie ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   This research paper studies the challenges that mathematics faculty and graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) faced when moving active and collaborative calculus courses from in-person to virtual instruction. As part of a larger pedagogical change project (described below), the math department at a public Research-1 university began transitioning pre-calculus and calculus courses to an active and collaborative learning (ACL) format in Fall 2019. The change began with the introduction of collaborative worksheets in recitations which were led by GTAs and supported by undergraduate learning assistants (LAs). Students recitation periods collaboratively solving the worksheet problems on whiteboards. When COVID-19 forced the rapid transition to online teaching, these ACL efforts faced an array of challenges. Faculty and GTA reflections on the changes to teaching and learning provide insight into how instructional staff can be supported in implementing ACL across various modes of instruction. The calculus teaching change efforts discussed in this paper are part of an NSF-supported project that aims to make ACL the default method of instruction in highly enrolled gateway STEM courses across the institution. The theoretical framework for the project builds on existing work on grassroots change in higher education (Kezar and Lester, 2011) to study the effect of communities of practice on changing teaching culture. The project uses course-based communities of practice (Wenger, 1999) that include instructors, GTAs, and LAs working together to design and enact teaching change in the targeted courses alongside ongoing professional development for GTAs and LAs. Six faculty and five GTAs involved in the teaching change effort in mathematics were interviewed after the Spring 2020 semester ended. Interview questions focused on faculty and GTA experiences implementing active learning after the rapid transition to online teaching. A grounded coding scheme was used to identify common themes in the challenges faced by instructors and GTAs as they moved online and in the impacts of technology, LA support, and the department community of practice on the move to online teaching. Technology, including both access and capabilities, emerged as a common barrier to student engagement. A particular barrier was students’ reluctance to share video or participate orally in sessions that were being recorded, making group work more difficult than it had been in a physical classroom. In addition, most students lacked access to a tablet for freehand writing, presenting a significant hurdle for sharing mathematical notation when physical whiteboards were no longer an option. These challenges point to the importance of incorporating flexibility in active learning implementation and in the professional development that supports teaching changes toward active learning, since what is conceived for a collaborative physical classroom may be implemented in a much different environment. The full paper will present a detailed analysis of the data to better understand how faculty and GTA experiences in the transition to online delivery can inform planning and professional development as the larger institutional change effort moves forward both in mathematics and in other STEM fields. 

   more » « less
2. Creating Inclusivity in Engineering Teaching and Learning Contexts: Adapting the Aspire Summer Institute Model for Engineering Stakeholders

   Beverly, S. P. ; Gillian-Daniel, D. L. ( June 2023 , 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   There have been many initiatives to improve the experiences of marginalized engineering students in order to increase their desire to pursue the field of engineering. However, despite these efforts, workforce numbers indicate lingering disparities. Representation in the science and engineering workforce is low with women comprising only 16% of those in science and engineering occupations in 2019, and underrepresented minorities (e.g., Black, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native) collectively representing only approximately 20% (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics [NCSES], 2022). Additionally, engineering has historically held cultural values that can exclude marginalized populations. Cech (2013) argues that engineering has supported a meritocratic ideology in which intelligence is something that you are born with rather than something you can gain. Engineering, she argues, is riddled with meritocratic regimens that include such common practices as grading on a curve and “weeding” out students in courses.Farrell et al. (2021) discuss how engineering culture is characterized by elitism through practices of epistemological dominance (devaluing other ways of knowing), majorism (placing higher value on STEM over the liberal arts), and technical social dualism (the belief that issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion should not be part of engineering). These ideologies can substantially affect the persistence of both women and people of color–populations historically excluded in engineering, because their concerns and/or cultural backgrounds are not validated by instructors or other peers which reproduces inequality. Improving student-faculty interactions through engineering professional development is one way to counteract these harmful cultural ideologies to positively impact and increase the participation of marginalized engineering students. STEM reform initiatives focused on faculty professional development, such as the NSF INCLUDES Aspire Alliance (Aspire), seek to prepare and educate faculty to integrate inclusive practices across their various campus roles and responsibilities as they relate to teaching, advising, research mentoring, collegiality, and leadership. The Aspire Summer Institute (ASI) has been one of Aspire’s most successful programs. The ASI is an intensive, week-long professional development event focused on educating institutional teams on the Inclusive Professional Framework (IPF) and how to integrate its components, individually and as teams, to improve STEM faculty inclusive behaviors. The IPF includes the domains of identity, intercultural awareness, and relational skill-building (Gillian-Daniel et al., 2021). Identity involves understanding not only your personal cultural identity but that of students and the impact of identity in learning spaces. Intercultural awareness involves instructors being able to navigate cultural interactions in a positive way as they consider the diverse backgrounds of students, while recognizing their own privileges and biases. Relational involves creating trusting relationships and a positive communication flow between instructors and students. The ASI and IPF can be used to advance a more inclusive environment for marginalized students in engineering. In this paper, we discuss the success of the ASI and how the institute and the IPF could be adapted specifically to support engineering faculty in their teaching, mentoring, and advising. 

   more » « less
3. Evaluating the impact of malleable factors on percent time lecturing in gateway chemistry, mathematics, and physics courses

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-022-00333-3  

   Yik, Brandon J. ; Raker, Jeffrey R. ; Apkarian, Naneh ; Stains, Marilyne ; Henderson, Charles ; Dancy, Melissa H. ; Johnson, Estrella ( February 2022 , International Journal of STEM Education)

   Active learning used in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses has been shown to improve student outcomes. Nevertheless, traditional lecture-orientated approaches endure in these courses. The implementation of teaching practices is a result of many interrelated factors including disciplinary norms, classroom context, and beliefs about learning. Although factors influencing uptake of active learning are known, no study to date has had the statistical power to empirically test the relative association of these factors with active learning when considered collectively. Prior studies have been limited to a single or small number of evaluated factors; in addition, such studies did not capture the nested nature of institutional contexts. We present the results of a multi-institution, large-scale (N = 2382 instructors;N = 1405 departments;N = 749 institutions) survey-based study in the United States to evaluate 17 malleable factors (i.e., influenceable and changeable) that are associated with the amount of time an instructor spends lecturing, a proxy for implementation of active learning strategies, in introductory postsecondary chemistry, mathematics, and physics courses.

   Regression analyses, using multilevel modeling to account for the nested nature of the data, indicate several evaluated contextual factors, personal factors, and teacher thinking factors were significantly associated with percent of class time lecturing when controlling for other factors used in this study. Quantitative results corroborate prior research in indicating that large class sizes are associated with increased percent time lecturing. Other contextual factors (e.g., classroom setup for small group work) and personal contexts (e.g., participation in scholarship of teaching and learning activities) are associated with a decrease in percent time lecturing.

   Given the malleable nature of the factors, we offer tangible implications for instructors and administrators to influence the adoption of more active learning strategies in introductory STEM courses.

    

   more » « less
4. Prior experiences as students and instructors play a critical role in instructors’ decision to adopt evidence-based instructional practices

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-024-00478-3  

   Kraft, Annika R. ; Atieh, Emily L. ; Shi, Lu ; Stains, Marilyne ( March 2024 , International Journal of STEM Education)

   There has been a growing interest in characterizing factors influencing teaching decisions of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instructors in order to address the slow uptake of evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs). This growing body of research has identified contextual factors (e.g., classroom layout, departmental norms) as primary influencers of STEM instructors’ decision to implement EBIPs in their courses. However, models of influences on instructional practices indicate that context is only one type of factor to consider. Other factors fall at the individual level such as instructors’ past teaching experience and their views on learning. Few studies have been able to explore in depth the role of these individual factors on the adoption of EBIPs since it is challenging to control for contextual features when studying current instructors. Moreover, most studies exploring adoption of EBIPs do not take into account the distinctive features of each EBIP and the influence these features may have on the decision to adopt the EBIP. Rather, studies typically explore barriers and drivers to the implementation of EBIPs in general. In this study, we address these gaps in the literature by conducting an in-depth exploration of individual factors and EBIPs’ features that influence nine future STEM instructors’ decisions to incorporate a selected set of EBIPs in their teaching.

   We had hypothesized that the future instructors would have different reasoning to support their decisions to adopt or not Peer Instruction and the 5E Model as the two EBIPs have distinctive features. However, our results demonstrate that instructors based their decisions on similar factors. In particular, we found that the main drivers of their decisions were (1) the compatibility of the EBIP with their past experiences as students and instructors as well as teaching values and (2) experiences provided in the pedagogical course they were enrolled in.

   This study demonstrates that when considering the adoption of EBIPs, there is a need to look beyond solely contextual influences on instructor’s decisions to innovate in their courses and explore individual factors. Moreover, professional development programs should leverage their participants past experiences as students and instructors and provide an opportunity for instructors to experience new EBIPs as learners and instructors.

    

   more » « less
5. Measures of success: characterizing teaching and teaching change with segmented and holistic observation data

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-023-00413-y  

   Weston, Timothy J. ; Laursen, Sandra L. ; Hayward, Charles N. ( March 2023 , International Journal of STEM Education)

   Numerous studies show that active and engaging classrooms help students learn and persist in college, but adoption of new teaching practices has been slow. Professional development programs encourage instructors to implement new teaching methods and change the status quo in STEM undergraduate teaching, and structured observations of classrooms can be used in multiple ways to describe and assess this instruction. We addressed the challenge of measuring instructional change with observational protocols, data that often do not lend themselves easily to statistical comparisons. Challenges using observational data in comparative research designs include lack of descriptive utility for holistic measures and problems related to construct representation, non-normal distributions and Type-I error inflation for segmented measures.

   We grouped 790 mathematics classes from 74 instructors using Latent Profile Analysis (a statistical clustering technique) and found four reliable categories of classes. Based on this grouping we proposed a simple proportional measure we called Proportion Non-Didactic Lecture (PND). The measure aggregated the proportions of interactive to lecture classes for each instructor. We tested the PND and a measure derived from the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) with data from a professional development study. The PND worked in simple hypothesis tests but lacked some statistical power due to possible ceiling effects. However, the PND provided effective descriptions of changes in instructional approaches from pre to post. In tandem with examining the proportional measure, we also examined the RTOP-Sum, an existing outcome measure used in comparison studies. The measure is based on the aggregated items in a holistic observational protocol. As an aggregate measure we found it to be highly reliable, correlated highly with the PND, and had more statistical power than the PND. However, the RTOP measure did not provide the thick descriptions of teaching afforded by the PND.

   Findings suggest that useful dependent measures can be derived from both segmented and holistic observational measures. Both have strengths and weaknesses: measures from segmented data are best at describing changes in teaching, while measures derived from the RTOP have more statistical power. Determining the validity of these measures is important for future use of observational data in comparative studies.

    

   more » « less