Online modules for quantitative skill building: Exploring, adaptation and adoption

Carleton College, Northfield MN

Investigators

Abstract

With support from the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR), this project aims to serve the national interest by introducing faculty to the use of online resources to teach quantitative literacy and studying the effect of that implementation on the participating faculty. This IUSE project, anchored at Carleton College and Williams College and building on two NSF-funded projects (MathBench and The Math You Need When You Need It), will increase use of online modules that improve students' quantitative skills (QS) at the ten liberal arts colleges comprising the Liberal Arts Collaborative for Digital Innovation (LACOL), a consortium with a collective undergraduate enrollment of 18,500 and faculty base of 2,400. The online modules will help students develop QS necessary to succeed in introductory STEM courses. The project will advance research into adaptation and adoption of face-to-face and online pedagogies for teaching quantitative skills. Specifically, the project will improve LACOL faculty and staff members' understanding of best practices for the QS module development and use throughout the undergraduate STEM curriculum. This knowledge will be valuable within LACOL and across the undergraduate STEM education community. More specifically, first the project will develop a model for collaboratively adapting disparate research-based online resources into discrete modules, by faculty and staff in the LACOL. Second, the project will foster research, conducted by participating faculty and staff as well as educational researchers at the Science Education Resource Center, on what motivates or inhibits faculty to adapt and adopt these modules. By improving understanding of how face-to-face and virtual communities impact the effectiveness of change strategies and how consortia such as LACOL can disseminate best practices, this project will have reach beyond LACOL campuses. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.