Quantifying the Extent of Student Learning and Affect Associated with Observed Levels of Instructional Reform

This project aims to serve the national interest by quantifying the relationship among teaching activities, student learning, and student attitudes and interests so that instructors can make informed decisions about their teaching practices. Many studies report that active learning strategies, also known as student-centered teaching, support student success in science courses, but there is no quantitative measure of how much student learning changes with different degrees of student-centered teaching. This IUSE Track 1 Engaged Student Learning Level 2 project will fill this need for quantification. Better understanding of these relationships will in turn allow science instructors to make data-enabled modifications to their teaching practices to best support student learning.The goal of this project is to correlate student learning and interest with different degrees of reformed teaching practices. The project will design a series of introductory geoscience lessons that can be classified as teacher-centered/didactic, transitional/ interactive lecture, and student-centered based on the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) and Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) classroom observation protocols. RTOP and COPUS are tools used to measure faculty teaching methods and student engagement in STEM classrooms. The treatment lessons will be interspersed in classrooms at four different institutions over the course of multiple semesters so that students at each institution experience each lesson at each level of reformed teaching at least one time. A series of conceptual assessments and student interest questions will measure student learning, students’ perception of their learning, and student interest. Observations using the RTOP and COPUS protocols will measure the degree of student-centered teaching practices in both treatment and non-treatment classes. Demographic data will be used to assess if different degrees of student-centered instruction have any differential impacts on the learning, perceptions of learning, or interest for students with different demographic characteristics. The project will use a model selection approach to determine which factors (degree of student-centered teaching, student interest, student perceptions of learning, demographic factors) best predict student learning gains. The outcomes of this project will be a model that characterizes how student learning scales with different degrees of student-centered teaching. By integrating student demographics with learning and affect, this work will generate new information to characterize learning and affect for students from traditionally minoritized groups and will provide a framework that faculty can use to determine instructional practices they wish to adopt based on a clear target for improved student success. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through its 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.