RAPID: Instructional Shifts in Response to COVID-19 and Their Impacts on Classroom-based Undergraduate Research Experiences

RAPID：应对 COVID-19 的教学转变及其对课堂本科生研究经验的影响

• 批准号: 2027658
• 负责人: Mark Graham
• 金额: $ 17.9万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-05-01 至 2023-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2027658&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Instructional; Shifts; Response; COVID

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) greatly expand opportunities for students to participate in authentic research early in their academic career. Research participation is linked to increased student persistence in STEM, especially for students from groups that are underrepresented in STEM. Thus, by increasing the number and diversity of students who have a research experience, CURES also broaden participation in STEM careers. CURES typically engage student teams in hands-on work in laboratories or field sites. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, the national CURE education landscape quickly and dramatically changed to a fully “online” mode, with limited opportunity for advance planning. Thus, this situation presents a unique and urgent opportunity to explore how CUREs evolve in a new online environment, as well as whether they continue to achieve core CURE educational goals. It also allows for assessment of whether these rapid course changes have equitable outcomes for all students, including first-generation students, students on financial aid, and from different socioeconomic backgrounds. If CUREs are a solution for engaging large numbers of early-stage undergraduates in authentic STEM research, then the feasibility to translate CUREs online must be known. It is important to understand the structure of these newly online CUREs, in what situation they are effective, and who they benefit. The results of this project have the potential to expand understanding of CURE instructional approaches and outcomes, for both practitioners and researchers. Additionally, this unexpected shift to online coursework is an opportunity to engage broader higher education audiences in new thinking about course configuration, online effectiveness, and supports and barriers for online teaching.The purpose of this project is twofold: 1) capture and analyze how CURE course activities are rapidly translated into online formats; and 2) assess effects of course changes on students with different demographic profiles. It will provide early evidence to answer if, how, and why CURE benefits are realized through the different modality of online teaching. Importantly, this project will not make conclusions about the quality of online CUREs or online teaching overall; instead, it will explore which CURE activities can be readily delivered online, how they get delivered, how students respond, and how this new way of teaching changes/expands how instructors think about CUREs. The present project will use a mixed-methods design to track online implementation of CURE courses in two samples. The first sample will include a diverse set of local CUREs that span multiple STEM departments and have an array of course objectives/structures. This collection of CUREs will afford an in-depth, qualitative case study investigation that will capture and analyze instructors’ thinking, plans, and products, before, during, and after the shift from hands-on, laboratory-based CUREs to ones that are now abruptly online. The second sample will include CURE courses from a national network, which will allow us to explore more broadly and in a more quantitative way, how a large number of instructors transitioned to online. The project will also examine the resulting emotions, motivations, and experiences of students during this transition and how this semester’s student outcomes compare to those from prior years, through analysis of a historical student outcomes database. This approach will provide broad reach and comparison among a relatively homogenous set of CUREs, since all CURE instructors in this network are trained in the same research approach, have similar course objectives, and use similar materials. This RAPID award is made by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education program in the Division of Undergraduate Education (Education and Human Resources Directorate), using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.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.

基于课程的本科生研究体验 (CURE) 极大地增加了学生在学术生涯早期参与真实研究的机会。 研究参与与学生对 STEM 的坚持有关，特别是对于来自 STEM 代表性不足的群体的学生而言。 CURES 增加了具有研究经验的学生的数量和多样性，并扩大了对 STEM 职业的参与。随着 COVID-19 病毒的爆发，CURES 通常让学生团队在实验室或现场进行实践工作。 CURE 教育格局迅速而戏剧性地转变为完全“在线”模式，提前规划的机会有限。因此，这种情况提供了一个独特而紧迫的机会来探索 CURE 如何在新的在线环境中发展，以及它们是否继续发展。它还可以评估这些快速的课程变化是否对所有学生（包括第一代学生、接受经济援助的学生以及来自不同社会经济背景的学生）产生公平的结果。真正的 STEM 早期本科生研究，那么必须了解在线翻译 CURE 的可行性，了解这些新的在线 CURE 的结构、它们在什么情况下有效以及受益者是很重要的。该项目的结果有可能扩大对这些内容的理解。此外，对于从业者和研究人员来说，这种意外的在线课程转变是一个让更广泛的高等教育受众对课程配置、在线有效性以及在线教学的支持和障碍进行新思考的机会。该项目有两个方面：1）捕获和分析 CURE 课程活动如何快速转化为在线形式；2) 评估课程变化对不同人口特征的学生的影响 它将提供早期证据来回答 CURE 的好处是否、如何以及为何通过不同的在线方式实现。重要的是，该项目不会对在线 CURE 或在线教学的整体质量做出结论，而是将探讨哪些 CURE 活动可以在线进行、如何进行、学生如何反应以及这种新的方式如何进行。教学改变/扩展教师的教学方式考虑一下 CURE。当前的项目将使用混合方法设计来跟踪两个样本中 CURE 课程的在线实施。第一个样本将包括跨越多个 STEM 部门并具有一系列课程目标/结构的不同本地 CURE。这本 CURE 合集将提供深入的定性案例研究调查，捕捉并分析教师在从基于实验室的实践性 CURE 转变为基于实践的 CURE 之前、期间和之后的想法、计划和产品。现在突然第二个样本将包括来自全国网络的 CURE 课程，这将使我们能够更广泛、更定量地探索大量教师如何过渡到在线。通过分析历史学生成绩数据库，了解学生在此过渡期间的经历以及本学期的学生成绩与往年的比较，这种方法将提供相对同质的 CURE 集之间的广泛覆盖和比较，因为所有 CURE 教师都在其中。该网络接受相同的训练研究方法，具有相似的课程目标，并使用相似的材料。该 RAPID 奖项由本科教育部（教育和人力资源理事会）的改善本科生 STEM 教育计划颁发，资金来自冠状病毒援助、救济和经济部门。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

College Student Meaning Making and Interest Maintenance During COVID-19: From Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) to Science Learning Being Off-Campus and Online

COVID-19期间大学生的意义建构和兴趣维持：从基于课程的本科生研究经验（CURE）到校外和在线的科学学习

• DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2020.590738
• 发表时间: 2020-12
• 期刊: Frontiers in Education
• 影响因子: 2.3
• 作者: Wang, Cong;Bauer, Melanie;Burmeister, Alita R.;Hanauer, David I.;Graham, Mark J.
• 通讯作者: Graham, Mark J.