Title: THE BELIEFS AND PRACTICES OF GRADUATE STUDENT TUTORS ENGAGED IN ONLINE TUTORING DURING THE PANDEMIC
Many higher education institutions in the United States provide mathematics tutoring services for undergraduate students. These informal learning experiences generally result in increased final course grades (Byerly & Rickard, 2018; Rickard & Mills, 2018; Xu et al., 2014) and improved student attitudes toward mathematics (Bressoud et al., 2015). In recent years, research has explored the beliefs and practices of undergraduate and, sometimes graduate, peer tutors, both prior to (Bjorkman, 2018; Johns, 2019; Pilgrim et al., 2020) and during the COVID19 pandemic (Gyampoh et al., 2020; Mullen et al., 2021; Van Maaren et al., 2021). Additionally, Burks and James (2019) proposed a framework for Mathematical Knowledge for Tutoring Undergraduate Mathematics adapted from Ball et al. (2008) Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching, highlighting the distinction between tutor and teacher. The current study builds on this body of work on tutors’ beliefs by focusing on mathematical sciences graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) who tutored in an online setting during the 2020-2021 academic year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this study addresses the following research question: What were the mathematical teaching beliefs and practices of graduate student tutors participating in online tutoring sessions through the mathematics learning center (MLC) during the COVID-19 pandemic? more »« less
Houston, Scotty; Webb, Jessica; Shannon, Dave; Olson, Gary; Harrell-Williams, Leigh
(, 2021 Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education Reports)
Karunakaran, S. S.; Higgins, A.
(Ed.)
The abrupt switch from in-person instruction and tutoring to remote or online instruction and tutoring as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 was difficult for even the most experienced instructor. In this paper, we explore how graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) at three different institutions responded to and experienced this change. Data was collected from surveys and focus groups conducted with graduate teaching assistants at each institution, as part of our ongoing collaborative NSF-funded project focusing on equipping mathematical sciences GTAs to become better teachers. In their responses, the graduate teaching assistants discussed topics ranging from what they did in their remote classrooms to the challenges they faced and supports they received from their department, university, and fellow classmates and faculty.
Shuey, Melissa; Akera, Atsushi; Appelhans, Sarah; Cheville, R. Alan; De Pree, Thomas; Fatehibouroujeni, Soheil
(, ASEE annual conference exposition)
null
(Ed.)
This paper is based on a series of semi-structured, qualitative interviews that were conducted with students, by an undergraduate student and lead author of this paper, that focused on their experiences with educational technologies and online teaching pedagogy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As U.S. educators scrambled to adapt to online course delivery modes as a result of the first wave of the pandemic in the spring 2020 semester, those in the educational technology and online learning community saw the potential of this movement to vastly accelerate the implementation of online systems in higher education. A shift that may have taken 20 years to accomplish was implemented in two waves, first with the immediate forced shift to online learning in March 2020; and second, a less immediate shift to hybrid and online instruction designed to accommodate the different geographic variation in COVID-19 intensity, along with varied political and institutional ecologies surrounding online versus in-person instruction for the 2020-2021 academic year. With all of the rapid changes that were occurring during the spring of 2020, we wanted to investigate how students experienced and perceived faculty use of technology during this particular moment in time. This study documents this transition through the eyes of undergraduate students, and demonstrates the varied ways in which faculty navigated the transition to online learning. According to our interviewees, some faculty were thoughtful and competent and provided a supportive environment that paid attention to a students’ capacity for online learning, rather than maintaining traditional instructional practices. Others relied on practices from in-person instruction that were familiar, but appeared to be nervous in the new online teaching environment. Then there were those who seemed occupied by other concerns, where a focus on effective undergraduate teaching remained limited to begin with, and their approach to online instruction was driven by convenience. Our qualitative data clearly reveals that the ways in which faculty conducted their online courses directly impacted student learning experiences. In this study, we set out to document both the faculty instructional strategies in a hybrid/online environment and student accounts of those choices and their resulting experiences. While we continue to analyze this unique data set on this moment of transition in engineering education, we hope that this paper will also lead to policy recommendations regarding faculty adaptations to online instruction in general. We include some initial thoughts and recommendations below.
Donham, Cristine; Pohan, Cathy; Menke, Erik; Kranzfelder, Petra
(, Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education)
ABSTRACT While many STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) instructors returned to in-person instruction in fall 2021, others found themselves continuing to teach via online, hybrid, or hybrid flexible (i.e., hyflex) formats. Regardless of one’s instructional modality, the findings from our own and other studies provided insight into effective strategies for increasing student engagement and decreasing cognitive overload. As part of this perspective, we included data from undergraduate students, many of whom are first generation and low income and from marginalized backgrounds, to identify instructional practices that helped them thrive and succeed during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, we explored the various pedagogies and technologies utilized during emergency remote teaching to identify best practices as we considered the future of teaching. In sharing best practices at our institution, we aimed to provide a framework for deep reflection among the readers and the identification of practices to start, stop, and/or continue at their own institutions.
Donoghue, T.
(, Psychology of Mathematics Education)
Lamberg, T.
(Ed.)
This brief research report examines the discursive shifts of a secondary mathematics teacher participating in a collaborative learning community centered on culturally responsive mathematics teaching. We draw on two frameworks to analyze the teacher’s discursive moves. The first framework comes from Lefstein et al., (2020) on generative discourse practices in learning communities. The second framework — FAIR (Louie et al., 2021) — offers noticing practices for deficit versus anti-oppressive mathematics teaching. Through these lenses, we found that the teacher’s initial discourse practices were marked by deficit framing and noticing. The teacher’s discourse practices begin to shift towards a culturally responsive pedagogy in response to a particular artifact that captured student noticing and reframed the teacher’s problem of practice.
Zhang, Jing; Kim, Heejeong; Zhang, Limei
(, Discover Education)
The COVID-19 outbreak has had a significant impact on higher education worldwide. In-person courses had to be quickly transited to online, including lab courses embedded with Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs). In response to this challenge, we successfully converted a fully in-person biochemistry lab that integrated with a 6-week modular CURE (mCURE) into a hybrid CURE (hCURE) in Fall 2020, with support from the Malate dehydrogenase CUREs Community. The hCURE was structured to have in-person labs and online activities arranged on an alternating weekly basis, so that only half of the regular class size of students attended the hands-on labs at any given time to maintain proper social distancing. To evaluate the efficacy of the hCURE, student science self-efficacy and conceptual understanding of protein structure–function relationships were measured using pre-course and post-course surveys and tests, respectively. Our data showed a significant increase in student science self-efficacy and conceptual knowledge test scores. Furthermore, we compared the pre-lab quiz scores that assessed various biochemical concepts and skills across three different semesters, Fall 2019 with a fully in-person mCURE before the pandemic, Fall 2020 with the hCURE implemented during the pandemic, and Fall 2021 when the lab returned to the fully in-person mCURE following the pandemic. A significant decline in quiz scores from Fall 2019 to Fall 2020, and an even further decline from Fall 2019 to Fall 2021 were observed, suggesting that apart from the impact of course modality, the pandemic may have exerted a lasting adverse effect on student learning.
Mule’, T, Houston, S., Piontek, J., Webb, J., and Harrell-Williams, L. THE BELIEFS AND PRACTICES OF GRADUATE STUDENT TUTORS ENGAGED IN ONLINE TUTORING DURING THE PANDEMIC. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10447765. Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education .
Mule’, T, Houston, S., Piontek, J., Webb, J., & Harrell-Williams, L. THE BELIEFS AND PRACTICES OF GRADUATE STUDENT TUTORS ENGAGED IN ONLINE TUTORING DURING THE PANDEMIC. Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, (). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10447765.
Mule’, T, Houston, S., Piontek, J., Webb, J., and Harrell-Williams, L.
"THE BELIEFS AND PRACTICES OF GRADUATE STUDENT TUTORS ENGAGED IN ONLINE TUTORING DURING THE PANDEMIC". Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (). Country unknown/Code not available. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10447765.
@article{osti_10447765,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {THE BELIEFS AND PRACTICES OF GRADUATE STUDENT TUTORS ENGAGED IN ONLINE TUTORING DURING THE PANDEMIC},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10447765},
abstractNote = {Many higher education institutions in the United States provide mathematics tutoring services for undergraduate students. These informal learning experiences generally result in increased final course grades (Byerly & Rickard, 2018; Rickard & Mills, 2018; Xu et al., 2014) and improved student attitudes toward mathematics (Bressoud et al., 2015). In recent years, research has explored the beliefs and practices of undergraduate and, sometimes graduate, peer tutors, both prior to (Bjorkman, 2018; Johns, 2019; Pilgrim et al., 2020) and during the COVID19 pandemic (Gyampoh et al., 2020; Mullen et al., 2021; Van Maaren et al., 2021). Additionally, Burks and James (2019) proposed a framework for Mathematical Knowledge for Tutoring Undergraduate Mathematics adapted from Ball et al. (2008) Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching, highlighting the distinction between tutor and teacher. The current study builds on this body of work on tutors’ beliefs by focusing on mathematical sciences graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) who tutored in an online setting during the 2020-2021 academic year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this study addresses the following research question: What were the mathematical teaching beliefs and practices of graduate student tutors participating in online tutoring sessions through the mathematics learning center (MLC) during the COVID-19 pandemic?},
journal = {Proceedings of the forty-fourth annual meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education},
author = {Mule’, T and Houston, S. and Piontek, J. and Webb, J. and Harrell-Williams, L.},
editor = {Lischka, A. E. and Dyer, E. B. and Jones, R. S. and Lovett, J. N. and Strayer, J. and & Drown, S.}
}
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