Collaborative Reserach: Standard: Comparison of Communications across Campus Cultures (The 4C Project): Toward Evidence-based Customization of Learning Experiences

St Mary'S College, Notre Dame IN

Investigators

Abstract

Ethical behavior of STEM professionals is essential for the progress of science, advancement of the national health, and prosperity and welfare. Therefore STEM trainees must receive the appropriate education to mature into responsible professionals that display an awareness and understanding of ethical challenges within STEM. Does "one size fits all" STEM ethics training result in a well-trained STEM workforce? The goal of this collaborative project is to define, through data, STEM ethics learning communities and then develop a strategy for matching communities with resources effective for them. Through this study, hundreds of STEM trainees from four distinct higher learning institutions will each provide individual demographic and academic information, survey data, and writing samples. The data sets generated will be analyzed to determine which common qualities define ethical STEM learning communities. Evidence-based identification of learning communities will then provide the basis for strategically matching them with a subset of the many resources and experiences already developed for ethical STEM education. This study will be conducted simultaneously at campuses with different constituencies and cultures: (1) Saint Mary's College, an all-women's college; (2) the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic research university; (3) Xavier University, a Historically Black College or University (HBCU); and (4) the University of Virginia, a public research university. The methods employed will include administration and analysis of five validated scales (for learning style, personality, moral concern, moral action, and environmental orientation) and automated text analysis of student writings in three different formats (electronic journal entry, online discussion forum, and Twitter). To develop and test principles of differentiated instruction emerging from this research, investigators from each institution will design and offer pilot learning experiences combining a single established resource or approach for ethics education with one defined learning community. The resulting case reports and underlying principles are expected to be articulated in the Strategic Engagement of Learning Communities for Ethical STEM Handbook and distributed across STEM research networks, the science and engineering ethics community, informal science and education networks, and K-12 science education networks.