Title: Investigating patterns of student engagement during collaborative activities in undergraduate chemistry courses
Several studies have highlighted the positive effects that active learning may have on student engagement and performance. However, the influence of active learning strategies is mediated by several factors, including the nature of the learning environment and the cognitive level of in-class tasks. These factors can affect different dimensions of student engagement such as the nature of social processing in student groups, how knowledge is used and elaborated upon by students during in-class tasks, and the amount of student participation in group activities. In this study involving four universities in the US, we explored the association between these different dimensions of student engagement and the cognitive level of assigned tasks in five distinct general chemistry learning environments where students were engaged in group activities in diverse ways. Our analysis revealed a significant association between task level and student engagement. Retrieval tasks often led to a significantly higher number of instances of no interaction between students and individualistic work, and a lower number of knowledge construction and collaborative episodes with full student participation. Analysis tasks, on the other hand, were significantly linked to more instances of knowledge construction and collaboration with full group participation. Tasks at the comprehension level were distinctive in their association with more instances of knowledge application and multiple types of social processing. The results of our study suggest that other factors such as the nature of the curriculum, task timing, and class setting may also affect student engagement during group work. more »« less
A variety of research studies reveal the advantages of actively engaging students in the learning process through collaborative work in the classroom. However, the complex nature of the learning environment in large college general chemistry courses makes it challenging to identify the different factors that affect students’ cognitive and social engagement while working on in-class tasks. To provide insights into this area, we took a closer look at students’ conversations during in-class activities to characterize typical discourse patterns and expressed chemical thinking in representative student groups in samples collected in five different learning environments across four universities. For this purpose, we adapted and applied a ‘Community of Learners’ (CoL) theoretical perspective to characterize group activity through the analysis of student discourse. Within a CoL perspective, the extent to which a group functions as a community of learners is analyzed along five dimensions including Community of Discourse (CoD), Legitimization of Differences (LoD), Building on Ideas (BoI), Reflective Learning (RL), and Community of Practice (CoP). Our findings make explicit the complexity of analyzing student engagement in large active learning environments where a multitude of variables can affect group work. These include, among others, group size and composition, the cognitive level of the tasks, the types of cognitive processes used to complete tasks, and the motivation and willingness of students to substantively engage in disciplinary reasoning. Our results point to important considerations in the design and implementation of active learning environments that engage more students with chemical ideas at higher levels of reasoning.
Nennig, H.; States, N.; Macrie-Shuck, M.; Fateh, S.; Gunes, Z.; Cole, R.; Rushton, G.; Shah, L.; Talanquer, V.(
, Chemistry Education Research and Practice)
A variety of research studies reveal the advantages of actively engaging students in the learning process through collaborative work in the classroom. However, the complex nature of the learning environment in large college general chemistry courses makes it challenging to identify the different factors that affect students’ cognitive and social engagement while working on in-class tasks. To provide insights into this area, we took a closer look at students’ conversations during in-class activities to characterize typical discourse patterns and expressed chemical thinking in representative student groups in samples collected in five different learning environments across four universities. For this purpose, we adapted and applied a ‘Community of Learners’ (CoL) theoretical perspective to characterize group activity through the analysis of student discourse. Within a CoL perspective, the extent to which a group functions as a community of learners is analyzed along five dimensions including Community of Discourse (CoD), Legitimization of Differences (LoD), Building on Ideas (BoI), Reflective Learning (RL), and Community of Practice (CoP). Our findings make explicit the complexity of analyzing student engagement in large active learning environments where a multitude of variables can affect group work. These include, among others, group size and composition, the cognitive level of the tasks, the types of cognitive processes used to complete tasks, and the motivation and willingness of students to substantively engage in disciplinary reasoning. Our results point to important considerations in the design and implementation of active learning environments that engage more students with chemical ideas at higher levels of reasoning.
de la Rosa-Pohl, Diana; Horn, Catherine(
, 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)
Background & Program Description: The link between student engagement and retention is well-established in the education literature. As a result, many colleges have developed first-year experience programs to engage students in early technical work and to promote community-building. However, many of these student success programs require participation in extracurricular activities, which require time outside of class. Yet time for extracurricular activities is a luxury that many students of low socioeconomic status (SES) cannot afford due to family or work obligations.
The Scholarships in STEM (S-STEM) program, funded by the National Science Foundation, provides crucial financial support to high-achieving low-SES STEM students. The S-STEM scholarships give students the option to work less or not at all. The intended result is that students regain the time afforded to their more privileged peers, thereby also giving them the opportunity to more effectively engage with their institution, studies, and peers.
The Endeavour Program is a two-year program that incorporates the S-STEM financial support into a multi-faceted and multi-college program in STEM designed to increase the level of student engagement in school. The scholars, who are recruited from three colleges, take classes together, work on hands-on team projects, attend professional and personal development events, participate in outreach events, and conduct research with faculty mentors. Over the course of the two-year program, four dimensions of student engagement (academic, behavioral, cognitive, and affective) are tracked to determine the appropriateness of using these engagement levels as predictors of success.
Results: Two cohorts of 20 students were recruited in the fall of 2017 and in the fall of 2018. The first cohort completed the two-year program in the spring of 2020, and the second cohort began the second year of the program in the fall of 2020. No third cohort was recruited in 2020 due the Covid19 pandemic. The third and fourth cohorts will now enter the program in the fall of 2021 and the fall of 2022 respectively.
Overall, the results of the Endeavour Program have been positive. The final retention outcome for the first cohort (the only cohort to complete the program thus far) was 85% (17/20). Retention for the second cohort is currently at 100% (20/20). Initial results show that the S-STEM scholars are performing academically as well as their peers who do not share the same risk factors. In addition, the number of completed hours is also on par with their peers. However, the most significant gains were observed in the qualitative data. Students expressed fears and anxieties about the high school to college transition and reported that the guidance provided and the community formed through the Endeavour Program alleviated many of those negative emotions.
The full paper shows student engagement data obtained over time for the first and second cohorts as well as lessons learned and directions for future work. Also, examples of advising charts created in an engagement data dashboard show how the quantitative engagement data has been compiled and organized to show early warning signs for current and future cohorts.
This Research Full paper focuses on perceptions and experiences of freshman and sophomore engineering students when playing an online serious engineering game that was designed to improve engineering intuition and knowledge of statics. Use of serious educational engineering games has increased in engineering education to help students increase technical competencies in engineering disciplines. However, few have investigated how these engineering games are experienced by the students; how games influence students' perceptions of learning, or how these factors may lead to inequitable perspectives among diverse populations of students. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions, appeal, and opinions about the efficacy of educational online games among a diverse population of students in an engineering mechanics statics course. It was hypothesized that compared to majority groups (e.g., men, White), women of color who are engineering students would experience less connections to the online educational game in terms of ease of use and level of frustration while playing. It is believed that these discordant views may negatively influence the game's appeal and efficacy towards learning engineering in this population of students. Design/Method: The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is expanded in this study, where the perspectives of women of colour (Latinx, Asian and African American) engineering students are explored. The research approach employed in this study is a mixed-method sequential exploratory design, where students first played the online engineering educational game, then completed a questionnaire, followed by participation in a focus group. Responses were initially analyzed through open and magnitude coding approaches to understand whether students thought these educational games reflected their personal culture. Results: Preliminary results indicate that though the majority of the students were receptive to using the online engineering software for their engineering education, merely a few intimated that they would use this software for engineering exam or technical job interview preparation. A level-one categorical analysis identified a few themes that comprised unintended preservation of inequality in favor of students who enjoyed contest-based education and game technology. Competition-based valuation of presumed mastery of course content fostered anxiety and intimidation among students, which caused some to "game the game" instead of studying the material, to meet grade goals. Some students indicated that they spent more time (than necessary) to learn the goals of the game than engineering content itself, suggesting a need to better integrate course material while minimizing cognitive effort in learning to navigate the game. Conclusions: Preliminary results indicate that engineering software's design and the way is coupled with course grading and assessment of learning outcomes, affect student perceptions of the technology's acceptance, usefulness, and ease of use as a "learning tool." Students were found to have different expectations of serious games juxtaposed software/apps designed for entertainment. Conclusions also indicate that acceptance of inquiry-based educational games in a classroom among diverse populations of students should clearly articulate and connect the game goals/objectives with class curriculum content. Findings also indicate that a multifaceted schema of tools, such as feedback on game challenges, and explanations for predictions of the game should be included in game/app designs.
Kweon, Byoung-Suk; Belle, Lauren; Fisher, Kim; Burke, Tara; Haghtalab, Joy; Roy, Nirupam; Bonsignore, Elizabeth; Sachs, Naomi; Roberts, Jennifer.(
, The International Network for the Science of Team Science (INSciTS))
Broadband infrastructure in urban parks may serve crucial functions including an amenity to boost overall park use and a bridge to propagate WiFi access into contiguous neighborhoods. This project: SCC:PG Park WiFi as a BRIDGE to Community Resilience has developed a new model —Build Resilience through the Internet and Digital Greenspace Exposure, leveraging off-the-shelf WiFi technology, novel algorithms, community assets, and local partnerships to lower greenspace WiFi costs.
This interdisciplinary work leverages: computer science, information studies, landscape architecture, and public health. Collaboration methodologies and relational definitions across disciplines are still nascent —especially when paired with civic-engaged, applied research.
Student researchers (UG/Grad) are excellent partners in bridging disciplinary barriers and constraints. Their capacity to assimilate multiple frameworks has produced refinements to the project’s theoretical lenses and suggested novel socio-technical methodology improvements. Further, they are excellent ambassadors to community partners and stakeholders.
In BRIDGE, we tested two mechanisms to augment student research participation. In both, we leveraged a classic, curriculum-based model named the Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability program (PALS). This campus-wide, community-engaged initiative pairs faculty and students with community partners. PALS curates economic, environmental, and social sustainability challenges and scopes projects to customize appropriate coursework that addresses identified challenges. Outcomes include: literature searches, wireframes, and design plans that target solutions to civic problems. Constraints include the short semester timeframe and curriculum-learning-outcome constraints.
(1) On BRIDGE, Dr. Kweon executed a semester-based Landscape Architecture PALS 400-level-studio. 18 undergraduates conducted in-class and in-field work to assess community needs and proposed design solutions for future park-wide WiFi. Research topics included: community-park history, neighborhood demographics, case-study analysis, and land-cover characteristics. The students conducted an in-Park, community engagement session —via interactive posterboard surveys, to gain input on what park amenities might be redesigned or added to promote WiFi use. The students then produced seven re-design plans; one included a café/garden, with an eco-corridor that integrated technology with nature.
(2) From the classic, curriculum-based PALS model we created a summer-intensive for our five research assistants, to stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration in their research tasks and co-analysis of project data products: experimental technical WiFi-setup, community survey results, and stakeholder needs-assessments. Students met weekly with each other and team leadership, exchanged journal articles, and attended joint research events. This model shows promise for integrating students more formally into an interdisciplinary research project. An end-of-intensive focus group highlighted, from the students’ perspective, the pro/cons of this model.
Results: In contrasting the two mechanisms, our results include: Model 1 is tried-and-trued and produces standardized, reliable products. However, as work is group based, student independence is limited —to explore topics/themes of interest. Civic groups are typically thrilled with the diversity of action plans produced. Model 2 provides greater independence in student-learning outcomes, fosters interdisciplinary, “dictionary-building” that can be used by the full team, deepens methodological approaches, and allows for student stipend payments. Lessons learned: intensive time frame needed more research team support and ideally should be extended, when possible, over the full project-span. UMD-IRB#1785365-4; NSF-award: 2125526.
@article{osti_10355803,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Investigating patterns of student engagement during collaborative activities in undergraduate chemistry courses},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10355803},
DOI = {10.1039/D1RP00227A},
abstractNote = {Several studies have highlighted the positive effects that active learning may have on student engagement and performance. However, the influence of active learning strategies is mediated by several factors, including the nature of the learning environment and the cognitive level of in-class tasks. These factors can affect different dimensions of student engagement such as the nature of social processing in student groups, how knowledge is used and elaborated upon by students during in-class tasks, and the amount of student participation in group activities. In this study involving four universities in the US, we explored the association between these different dimensions of student engagement and the cognitive level of assigned tasks in five distinct general chemistry learning environments where students were engaged in group activities in diverse ways. Our analysis revealed a significant association between task level and student engagement. Retrieval tasks often led to a significantly higher number of instances of no interaction between students and individualistic work, and a lower number of knowledge construction and collaborative episodes with full student participation. Analysis tasks, on the other hand, were significantly linked to more instances of knowledge construction and collaboration with full group participation. Tasks at the comprehension level were distinctive in their association with more instances of knowledge application and multiple types of social processing. The results of our study suggest that other factors such as the nature of the curriculum, task timing, and class setting may also affect student engagement during group work.},
journal = {Chemistry Education Research and Practice},
volume = {23},
number = {1},
author = {Reid, Joshua W. and Kirbulut Gunes, Zubeyde Demet and Fateh, Shaghayegh and Fatima, Adan and Macrie-Shuck, Michael and Nennig, Hannah T. and Quintanilla, Fabrizzio and States, Nicole E. and Syed, Ahmad and Cole, Renee and Rushton, Gregory T. and Shah, Lisa and Talanquer, Vicente},
}
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