Development, Implementation, and Evaluation of Open-access, Interactive, Video-Supported Training Resources for Peer Leaders in STEM Collaborative Learning

University Of Rochester, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving the quality of undergraduate STEM education. Specifically, it focuses on enhancing the preparation of undergraduate students to serve as peer leaders in STEM courses. Teaching approaches that emphasize peer instruction and collaborative learning are known to increase student success and retention in STEM. These approaches also benefit the students who serve as peer leaders. This project intends to develop, implement, evaluate, and disseminate a novel resource for training undergraduate STEM peer leaders. This training will be designed to emphasize practices that encourage feelings of inclusion in student groups and in STEM. Prior research has shown that students who do not feel included in science or in their STEM classrooms can be hesitant about participating in group activities, such as collaborative learning. This project aims to improve the training of peer leaders so that they are more aware of the factors that can impede a student’s sense of belonging and can develop practices that facilitate inclusion. Based on prior work, undergraduate peer leaders who participate in this training are more likely to engage in inclusive practices in their collaborative learning groups. This change in peer mentor practice is expected to lead to broader student participation in collaborative learning and has the potential to increase retention in STEM of traditionally underrepresented groups, such as women and students from racial or ethnic minorities. Ultimately, these efforts have the potential to contribute to increasing diversity within the national STEM workforce. The project intends to create two interactive training modules that could be widely used to train peer leaders in inclusive facilitation in STEM collaborative groups. These modules will be based on the effective use of live actors and an interactive theater approach for peer leader training at the University of Rochester. Each of the new training modules will be interactive video versions designed to simulate the previously used live-action experiences. These modules will be uploaded on a freely accessible website and will include: (i) a video of a scene illustrating barriers to participation in a simulated peer-led group learning environment; (ii) interactive video interviews with student characters in the scene; and (iii) a lesson plan with discussion prompts, assignments, and other resources that STEM faculty, students, and learning specialists can use for discussions of the videos. In this work, the University of Rochester, the lead institution, will partner with the University of Texas at El Paso, the second largest university with a majority Hispanic student population in the US, and the Rochester Institute of Technology, home of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. This collaboration will enable the project team to test how these interactive video resources can be used in different institutional and pedagogical contexts, including peer-led team learning and learning assistant approaches. Evaluative feedback from STEM peer leaders, students in collaborative groups, and faculty will be collected to explore the direct impact of these training resources as well as their potential to improve STEM collaborative environments in undergraduate education. The project will generate new knowledge by testing the feasibility of using a digital media platform to support interactive training of student leaders for inclusive group facilitation in STEM. The proposed range of evaluation activities could lead to a broader understanding of how this type of training resource can improve STEM collaborative learning environments. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. 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.