Building Capacity to Develop a Collaborative Research Agenda on Project-Based Learning as a Mechanism for Program and Institutional Transformation

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by building the capacity of the STEM community to design and conduct rigorous research studies to investigate Problem-Based Learning (PBL). PBL is an educational approach and instructional practice in which students learn by solving a complex, real world problem. The propagation of PBL in higher education outpaces research on this experiential learning approach. In response, this project aims to develop and foster the research capacity of the STEM community to investigate PBL. The project will address a significant gap in the research on PBL: most research on PBL has focused at its impacts at the course level. This project will instead focus on PBL as a mechanism to transform STEM programs and higher education institutions. This focus draws on the project team’s expertise and experience in faculty professional development, including in fostering the propagation of PBL in STEM. The project is expected to contribute to examination of the efficacy of PBL as a mechanism for transforming undergraduate STEM education at the program and institutional levels. Cognizant that there are a multitude and variety of research topics to investigate and hypotheses to test, this project aims to build the capacity of partner institutions to engage in research through the use of different research methods, from quasi-experimental and analytic studies to phenomenological and multi-site case studies. Activities will include participation in professional learning communities augmented by engagement in semester-long training, auto-ethnography, systematic research syntheses/meta-ethnography, and the application of developmental evaluation for assessing innovation and use (Patton, 2010). Self-reflection and auto-ethnography, as a means to document and investigate the development of expertise, is grounded in a phenomenological approach to research and knowledge generation. STEM Central, administered by Project Kaleidoscope, will provide an easily accessible site for sharing project deliverables including a PBL literature review, a census/field scan of institutions implementing PBL, MOOCs on organizational change theories, and logic models. It will also support development of a national community of practice among institutions implementing and researching PBL. The collaborating institutions include Worcester Poly Technic, Texas A&M University, Bellevue College, and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. 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.