Institutional Transformation through Curriculum and Faculty Development to Serve the Modern Chemistry Student

University Of Illinois At Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to serve the national interest by implementing evidenced-based teaching and inclusion practices throughout the undergraduate curriculum at a public research university with a diverse student body. This works to address the important problem of how change at the individual course or faculty level is insufficient to drive institutional transformation. Such transformation will be done through a multi-year effort that provides for faculty and curriculum development work that engages multiple faculty and covers all courses, including lecture and laboratory instruction in general, analytical, inorganic, physical chemistry, and biochemistry. Faculty will engage in multiple iterations of course revision using reflective practices that will provide data that characterizes the targeted outcomes of their revision work and, then, support iterative change. This will include a consistent emphasis on incorporating examples from current research and societal problems, to allow courses to improve how they teach students how to apply their knowledge to contemporary problems. The significance of this work lies in its potential to answer the important problem of knowing how to support change at the institutional level with efforts that engage curriculum-wide work by multiple faculty. The project builds on methods of design-based research, applied at the level of faculty development, individual courses, and throughout the entire department. Curricular reform will include components of the use of big ideas shared throughout the curriculum, linked also to applications in society and current research, specific science practices, and the incorporation of evidence-based instructional practices to support student knowledge and skill growth over time. Faculty development work includes components of analyzing chemistry teaching and learning, planning for instruction, reflecting on instructional practice, and collaborative action research investigation of the curriculum development. The research on the program will contribute to deepening understanding of how individual faculty and course change can occur and how this affects institutional transformation. The work will be disseminated through sharable tools that are used within the faculty and curriculum development community; individual reports in the education literature about course changes, and reports in the research literature that advance understanding of the intersecting activities of curriculum and faculty development and change at the institutional level. 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.