Cross-Institutional Faculty Learning to Improve Critical Transitions in STEM Education

University Corporation At Monterey Bay, Seaside CA

Investigators

Abstract

With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this project aims to improve student success by helping college STEM instructors examine the role of text in learning, select useful texts, and assign meaningful tasks. This pilot will result in a shared learning model between a community college and a regional public university. The accessibility of unprecedented amounts of data necessitates making sense of that data to turn it into information within and across sources. The current and future STEM workforce will benefit from students who use strategies to solve problems and make sense of texts in a variety of contexts and content areas. Strategies from Reading Apprenticeship will focus attention on four dimensions of learning--social, personal, cognitive, and knowledge building--to foster persistence and improve scientific literacy. The project will explore learning strategies faculty can easily implement to support student success. Through building community around shared learning goals, the project will support faculty and student learning. A dual campus professional learning model based on the Reading Apprenticeship framework for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) faculty at two- and four-year HSI institutions will accelerate improvements in the quality and effectiveness of STEM undergraduate education. In any content area, there are discipline-specific tasks and texts that require specialized ways of reading, thinking, and conveying information to others. This pilot and planning proposal will equip faculty to transform student retention and progression not only within the course, series, and curricular pathways within a department, but also across institutions. When applied across regional Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), the Reading Apprenticeship Framework is expected to increase individual faculty teaching competencies, strengthen inter- and intra-department alignment, and result in shared evidence-based teaching practices for metacognitive strategies. Using mixed methods including analysis of direct evidence of student learning and indirect evidence from surveys and focus groups, the project will: 1) test, and continuously improve a model of cross-institutional faculty learning; 2) examine the link between professional learning and a learning community focused on evidence-based pedagogy in critical transition STEM courses; and 3) evaluate the impact of professional learning on faculty. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity for institutional transformation at HSIs. 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.