A Power of Place Learning Experience & Research Network to Support Community College Student Success and Civic Engagement

地方学习体验的力量

• 批准号: 2141789
• 负责人: Lisa Corwin
• 金额: $ 59.98万
• 依托单位: University of Colorado at Boulder
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2141789&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Power; Place; Learning; Experience; &amp

ABSTRACT: A Power of Place Learning Experience & Research Network to Support Community College Student Success and Civic EngagementThe project aims to serve the national interest by facilitating undergraduate biology students’ ability and motivation to use their science skills in service of their communities with the ultimate goals of increasing public trust in science and persistence of students from populations historically underserved and underrepresented in science careers. National priorities emphasize the need for more science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) graduates, especially those from groups historically underserved and underrepresented in STEM fields (URM students). Concurrently, there is a pressing need for college graduates, particularly STEM graduates, to have the ability and desire to use their skills in service of their communities and to increase national trust in science. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) increase students’ persistence in STEM fields and increase their research self-efficacy and skill, especially for those from URM groups. Likewise, efforts to incorporate place-based learning through engagement in hands-on experiences that emphasize local history, culture, and service have potential to spark interest for a vast number of students and often lead to lasting civic engagement. This project leverages best practices from both CUREs and place-based learning to address the need for more URM students to persist in STEM and for more STEM graduates to serve their communities. Specifically, the project will support development and implementation of place-based CURE modules at both community colleges and four-year institutions across Colorado and New Mexico. These place-based CUREs will involve students in research that serves the local community where their institution is based. Education research for this project will seek to understand if and how place-based CUREs can increase students’ confidence and motivation to engage with their communities using their science skills and whether they increase persistence in STEM, especially for those who begin their postsecondary education at a community college. This project will investigate the efficacy of a new CURE model that incorporates place-based research serving a local community as a central design feature. Project personnel will design place-based CURE modules that can be easily incorporated into introductory biology courses. These modules will be refined and revised during professional development retreats in collaboration with community college and four-year institution instructors who will then implement them with support from project personnel. The disciple-based education research associated with this project will investigate this process for students and instructors. For students, studies will investigate if CURE modules influence research self-efficacy, sense of belonging to local and scientific communities, scientific civic engagement, and intent to persist in STEM. Students who participate in courses with CURE modules will be compared to those who participate in the same courses without CURE modules or highly similar courses. Notably, this is one of the first efforts to systematically design and test CUREs that aim to involve students in community-serving research. The scientific civic engagement scale, a new psychometric measure, will be used to test whether students who participate in place-based CUREs increase their self-efficacy, knowledge, and intentions with regard to scientific civic engagement. In addition the scale will assess the level of importance they assign to engaging with a community using science skills. Data will be disaggregated to examine outcomes for various groups of students who hold URM identities. For instructors, studies will investigate the degree to which they develop self-efficacy and technical pedagogical content knowledge related to field-research based instruction. Together these results will help to elucidate the value of a) implementing place-based research in modular CUREs, and b) providing pedagogical professional development for instructors learning to implement modular CUREs. Both curricula and research results will be made publicly available for undergraduate biology instructors wishing to incorporate community-engaged science into their courses. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the 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.

摘要：广场学习经验和研究网络的力量，以支持社区大学生的成功和公民汉堡，目的是通过促进生物学学生的能力和动力来服务于国家利益在科学方面，科学不足和代表性不足的学生在STEM领域（URM学生）的持久性强调了STEM领域的服务不足和代表性不足。服务社区的技能并增加了国家对科学的信任（治愈）。强调当地的历史，文化，文化，文化，文化和服务Habe的潜力，激发了许多学生的兴趣，并导致持久的公民参与度。在STEM和更多的STEM毕业生中，该项目将支持在Colorado和四年制科罗拉多州和新墨西哥州的四年制学院的基于地方的治疗模块的开发和实施。基于教育的社区基于当地社区作为中心设计的研究。对于学生而言，这一过程将调查belocal和科学社区的研究自我效能，科学的英语，并与Cure Modules进行持续存在。治愈或高度的静音课程。他们的自我效能感以及对科学的公民参与的强化将评估他们为教师提供社区科学技能的重要性。教学知识与基于现场研究的指导在一起Development Ram支持创建，探索和即兴实践和工具。该奖项反映了NSF'Stutrory Mission，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准来促进了值得评估的值得评估。