Collaborative Research: Impacting Assessment Practices of Postsecondary Faculty Teaching Gateway Chemistry Courses

合作研究：影响高等教育教师教授入门化学课程的评估实践

• 批准号: 1936574
• 负责人: Jeffrey Raker
• 金额: $ 25.13万
• 依托单位: University of South Florida
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-05-01 至 2025-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1936574&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Impacting; Assessment; Practices

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving undergraduate chemistry education. Assessing the nature and quality of students’ learning in science courses is a complex process. Since students focus their learning efforts on what they expect they will be tested on, high-quality assessments are vitally important as drivers of student learning. Results of assessments also inform stakeholders such as institutional accreditation boards and future employers. However, faculty members who teach college science courses typically do not receive training about how to create and use robust assessments in their courses. This project will provide professional development experiences for faculty members at two-year colleges to help them use robust assessment practices in their general chemistry and organic chemistry courses. The project will conduct a series of four three-day regional workshops for faculty members. Each workshop will be followed by a yearlong virtual mentoring experience for the participants, to support them as they implement what they learned in the workshops. Attendees will be encouraged to participate in teams from the same institution or geographical area to maximize local support and community development. The professional communities and assessment plans developed throughout the project are expected to have sustained impacts on faculty members’ assessment practices and on students’ learning in their chemistry courses.This collaboration between the University of South Florida, Grand Valley State University, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee will design, implement, and evaluate professional development experiences for faculty members at two-year colleges. Faculty workshop participants will gain knowledge and skills in developing course learning objectives, aligning course learning objectives with disciplinary frameworks, articulating test specification documents, and writing and evaluating assessment items. Throughout the subsequent academic year, participants will implement the assessment materials they developed. Monthly online meetings will be held for participants to share their implementation experiences and offer each other support, and for the project team to provide mentorship. Throughout the face-to-face workshops and online mentoring meetings, the project team will also collect data to develop, refine, and evaluate a model of faculty assessment practice change. The Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform model will serve as the guiding framework. Case studies will be constructed for each participant based on workshop and implementation artifacts, semi-structured interviews and surveys of the workshop participants that highlight how personal and cultural context and beliefs about teaching and learning are associated with enacted assessment practices. A cross case analysis will be conducted to better understand the impact of the workshops and online meetings including accelerators and barriers of assessment practice change, role of community in promoting assessment reform, and opportunities to improve postsecondary faculty professional development. The workshop materials and research findings from the project will be incorporated into future assessment workshops offered by the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Education Examinations Institute. The success of the project will be evaluated by an external advisory board. The project has the potential to generate new knowledge regarding the impact of a community practice approach to assessment practice reform in STEM education. This project is funded by the NSF IUSE: EHR Program, which 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.

该项目旨在通过改善本科化学教育来满足国家利益。评估科学课程中学生学习的性质和质量是一个复杂的过程。由于学生将学习工作集中在他们的期望上，他们将接受测试，因此作为学生学习的驱动力，高质量的评估至关重要。评估结果还告知利益相关者，例如机构认证委员会和未来的雇主。但是，教大学科学课程的教职员工通常不会接受有关如何在课程中创建和使用强大评估的培训。该项目将为两年级大学的教职员工提供专业发展经验，以帮助他们在一般化学和有机化学课程中使用强大的评估实践。该项目将为教职员工举办四个为期三天的区域研讨会。每个研讨会之后，将为参与者提供一年的虚拟指导经验，以支持他们在讲习班中所学到的知识。将鼓励与会者参加来自同一机构或地理区域的团队，以最大程度地提高本地支持和社区发展。预计在整个项目中制定的专业社区和评估计划将对教师的评估实践以及在化学课程中的学生学习产生持续的影响。这是南佛罗里达大学，格兰德山谷州立大学，威斯康星大学 - 威斯康星大学 - 米尔沃基大学之间的合作，将设计，实施和评估两年级教育学院的专业发展经验。教师研讨会参与者将获得知识和技能，以发展课程学习目标，将课程学习目标与纪律框架保持一致，表达测试规范文档以及编写和评估评估项目。通过随后的学年，参与者将实施他们开发的评估材料。每月在线会议将举行，以供参与者分享他们的实施经验并提供彼此的支持，并为项目团队提供指导。通过面对面的研讨会和在线心理会议，项目团队还将收集数据，以开发，完善和评估教师评估实践的模型。以教师为中心的系统改革模型将作为指导框架。将根据研讨会和实施工件，半结构化的访谈以及对研讨会参与者的调查为每个参与者构建案例研究，这些案例将强调个人和文化背景如何与教学和学习有关颁布的评估实践有关。将进行跨案例分析，以更好地了解讲习班和在线会议的影响，包括加速器和评估实践的障碍，社区在促进评估改革中的作用以及改善学院后教师专业发展的机会。该项目的研讨会材料和研究结果将纳入美国化学学会化学教育研究所提供的未来评估研讨会。该项目的成功将由外部顾问委员会评估。该项目有可能产生有关社区实践方法在STEM教育中评估实践改革的影响的新知识。该项目由NSF IUSE：EHR计划资助，该计划支持研发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过机构和社区转型的轨道，该计划支持努力在高等教育和纪律社区的机构之间进行改造和改善STEM教育。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用该基金会的知识分子的优点和更广泛的影响来审查标准，通过评估来诚实地支持支持。