A prosocial value intervention in gateway STEM courses.

Many college students, especially first-generation and underrepresented racial/ethnic minority students, desire courses and careers that emphasize helping people and society. Can instructors of introductory science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses promote motivation, performance, and equity in STEM fields by emphasizing the prosocial relevance of course material? We developed, implemented, and evaluated a prosocial utility-value intervention (UVI): A course assignment in which students were asked to reflect on the prosocial value of biology or chemistry course content; our focus was on reducing performance gaps between first-generation and continuing generation college students. In Studies 1a and 1b, we piloted two versions of a prosocial UVI in introductory biology (N = 282) and chemistry classes (N = 1,705) to test whether we could encourage students to write about the prosocial value of course content. In Study 2, we tested a version of the UVI that combines personal and prosocial values, relative to a standard UVI, which emphasizes personal values, using a randomized controlled trial in an introductory chemistry course (N = 2,505), and examined effects on performance and motivation in the course. In Study 3, we tested the prosocial UVI against a standard UVI in an introductory biology course (N = 712). Results suggest that the prosocial UVI may be particularly effective in promoting motivation and performance for first-generation college students, especially those who are more confident that they can perform well in the class, reflecting a classic expectancy-value interaction. Mediation analyses suggest that this intervention worked by promoting interest in chemistry. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Patterns, predictors, and outcomes of situated expectancy-value profiles in an introductory chemistry course.

Using latent profile analysis, we identified profiles of expectancy beliefs, perceived values, and perceived costs among 1433 first- and second-year undergraduates in an introductory chemistry course for STEMM majors. We also investigated demographic differences in profile membership and the relation of profiles to chemistry final exam achievement, science/STEMM credits completed, and graduating with a science/STEMM major. Four motivational profiles were identified: Moderately Confident and Costly (profile 1), Mixed Values-Costs/Moderate-High Confidence (profile 2), High Confidence and Values/Moderate-Low Costs (profile 3), and High All (profile 4). Underrepresented students in STEMM were more likely to be in profile 2 relative to profile 3. First-generation college students were more likely to be in profile 4 than profile 3. Finally, students likely to be in profile 3 had higher final exam grades than the other profiles and were more likely to graduate with a science major compared to profile 1. There were no differences in graduating science major between profile 3 and the other two profiles. Thus, profile 3 was most adaptive for both proximal (final exam) and distal (graduating with a science major) outcomes. Results suggest that supporting motivation early in college is important for persistence and ultimately the talent development of undergraduate STEMM students.

Utility-value intervention promotes persistence and diversity in STEM.

We tested the long-term effects of a utility-value intervention administered in a gateway chemistry course, with the goal of promoting persistence and diversity in STEM. In a randomized controlled trial (N = 2,505), students wrote three essays about course content and its personal relevance or three control essays. The intervention significantly improved STEM persistence overall (74% vs. 70% were STEM majors 2.5 y later). Effects were larger for students from marginalized and underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, who were 14 percentage points more likely to persist in STEM fields in the intervention condition (69% vs. 55%). Mediation analysis suggests that the intervention promoted persistence for these students by bolstering their motivation to attain a STEM degree and by promoting engagement with course assignments. This theory-informed curricular intervention is a promising tool for educators committed to retaining students in STEM.

Inside the STEM pipeline: Changes in students' biomedical career plans across the college years.

Researchers often invoke the metaphor of a pipeline when studying participation in careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), focusing on the important issue of students who "leak" from the pipeline, but largely ignoring students who persist in STEM. Using interview, survey, and institutional data over 6 years, we examined the experiences of 921 students who persisted in biomedical fields through college graduation and planned to pursue biomedical careers. Despite remaining in the biomedical pipeline, almost half of these students changed their career plans, which was almost twice the number of students who abandoned biomedical career paths altogether. Women changed plans more often and were more likely than men to change to a career requiring fewer years of post-graduate education. Results highlight the importance of studying within-pipeline patterns rather than focusing only on why students leave STEM fields.

College Students' Reasons for Leaving Biomedical Fields: Disenchantment with Biomedicine or Attraction to Other Fields?

This study examined whether students who left biomedical fields of study during college did so primarily because they became disenchanted with those fields or because they felt attracted to alternative fields of study. We identified 1193 students intending to pursue biomedical fields of study early in college, collected data about their beliefs and performance throughout college, and interviewed them near graduation about their future plans. Descriptively, we examined the topics students discussed as affecting their attrition decisions. Predictive research aims were to determine how academic performance, interest, and demographic factors predicted students' likelihood of overall attrition and likelihood of reporting distinct reasons for attrition. Among the 192 students who left biomedical fields, 62.5% described leaving only in terms of feeling disenchanted, whereas 37.4% expressed that they left at least in part due to feeling attracted towards non-biomedical fields. Most students who left biomedical fields expressed changing plans for reasons related to interest; this was especially prevalent among students who reported leaving due to attraction towards non-biomedical fields. Predictive analyses showed that interest in biology and grades at the end of an introductory biology course predicted the likelihood of overall attrition and likelihood of leaving due to feeling disenchantment, whereas underrepresented ethnic minority status predicted these outcomes positively. Interest and course grades also predicted the likelihood of students leaving due to feeling attraction towards other fields, but interest was a stronger predictor relative to grades. Results highlight distinct types of attrition that may have implications for policies to promote STEM retention.

Promoting Persistence in the Biological and Medical Sciences: An Expectancy-Value Approach to Intervention.

A wide range of occupations require science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills, yet almost half of students who intend to pursue a post-secondary STEM education abandon these plans before graduating from college. This attrition is especially pronounced among underrepresented groups (i.e., racial/ethnic minorities and first-generation college students). We conducted a two-year follow-up of a utility-value intervention that had been implemented in an introductory biology course. This intervention was previously shown to improve performance in the course, on average and especially among underrepresented students, reducing the achievement gap. The goal of the present study was to examine whether the intervention also impacted persistence in the biomedical track throughout college. The intervention had a more positive impact on long-term persistence for students who were more confident that they could succeed at the beginning of the course, and this effect was partially driven by the extent to which students reflected on the personal relevance of biological topics in their essays. This mechanism was distinct from the process that had been found to underlie intervention effects on performance - engagement with course material - suggesting that utility-value interventions may affect different academic outcomes by initiating distinct psychological processes. Although we did not find that the intervention was differentially effective for underrepresented students in terms of persistence, we found that positive effects on performance were associated with increased persistence for these students. Results suggest that utility-value interventions in an introductory course can be an effective strategy to promote persistence in the biomedical sciences throughout college.

The Benefits of Combining Value for the Self and Others in Utility-Value Interventions.

Utility-value interventions, in which students complete writing assignments about the personal usefulness of course material, show great promise for promoting interest and performance in introductory college science courses, as well as persistence in STEM fields. As researchers move toward scaling up this intervention, it's important to understand which features are key to its effectiveness. For example, prior studies have used different types of utility-value assignments (i.e., self-focused essays and other-focused letters) and different assignment structures (i.e., over time, researchers provided a variety of tasks or choices between tasks), without comparing them. It is not known whether these assignment features are incidental details or key aspects of the intervention that impact its effectiveness. In the current study, we systematically compared different utility-value assignments, as well as ways of combining them, in a randomized controlled trial in an introductory college biology course (N = 590). Specifically, we compared different versions of the intervention in terms of their relative effectiveness for promoting course performance and the motivational mechanisms through which they operated. The intervention was most effective when students had opportunities to write about utility for both the self and others. Grades were higher in conditions in which students were either assigned a variety of self-focused and other-focused assignments or given the choice between the two. Among students with low performance expectations, grades were higher when students were assigned a specific combination: a self-focused assignment followed by other-focused assignments. Results suggest that different versions of the intervention may work through different mechanisms.

Understanding Long-Term Effects of Motivation Interventions in a Changing World.

As intervention science develops, researchers are increasingly attending to the long-term effects of interventions in academic settings. Currently, however, there is no common taxonomy for understanding the complex processes through which interventions can produce long-lasting effects. The lack of a common framework results in a number of challenges that limit the ability of intervention scientists to effectively work toward their goal of preparing students to effectively navigate a changing and uncertain world. A comprehensive framework is presented to aid understanding of how interventions that target motivational processes in education produce downstream effects years after implementation. This framework distinguishes between three types of processes through which interventions may produce long-term effects: recursive processes (feedback loops by which positive effects can build on themselves over time), non-recursive chains of effects ("domino effects" in which proximal outcomes affect distinct distal outcomes), and latent intrapersonal effects (changed habits, knowledge, or perceptions that affect how students respond in different situations in the future). The framework is applied to intervention research that has reported long-term effects of motivation interventions, evidence for the processes described in this framework is evaluated, and suggestions are presented for how researchers can use the framework to improve intervention design. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how application of this framework can help intervention scientists to achieve their goal of positively influencing students' lifelong trajectories, especially in times of change and uncertainty.

Choose Your Own Intervention: Using Choice to Enhance the Effectiveness of a Utility-Value Intervention.

Utility-value interventions, in which students are asked to make connections between course material and their lives, are useful for improving students' academic outcomes in science courses. These interventions are thought to be successful in part because the intervention activities afford students autonomy while they complete them, but no research has explored directly whether interventions that include more support for autonomy are more effective. In this study, the degree of choice incorporated in a utility-value intervention was systematically varied in order to test this possibility. We assigned college biology students (n = 406) to a high-choice utility-value intervention condition (choose between two formats- essay or letter- for each of 3 writing assignments), one of two low-choice intervention conditions (complete either an essay and then a letter, or vice versa, and choose a format for the third assignment), or a control condition (summarize course material 3 times). Students in the high-choice condition reported significantly higher perceived utility value and interest for biology course content compared to students in the low-choice conditions. There were also significant, but small, indirect effects of choice on students' final course grades and enrollment in the next course in the biology sequence via perceived utility value and interest. Results suggest that social-psychological interventions which include more choice are likely to be more effective than those which include less choice.

Improving Performance and Retention in Introductory Biology with a Utility-Value Intervention.

One way to encourage performance and persistence in STEM fields is to have students write about the utility value (UV) or personal relevance of course topics to their life. This intervention has been shown to increase engagement and performance in introductory courses. However, questions remain about the longevity of the effects and how best to implement the intervention in terms of dosage and timing. We tested a UV intervention in the first semester of a two-semester introductory biology sequence. For each of three units across the semester, students (N = 577) were randomly assigned to receive either a UV writing assignment, in which they explained why course material was useful to them personally, or a control assignment, in which they summarized course material. This fully crossed design tested the effect of UV dosage level (0, 1, 2, or 3 UV assignments) as well as the effect of timing (e.g., UV first, control first). We found that students exposed to any dosage of UV earned higher grades in the course, were more likely to enroll in the second course of the biology sequence, and were less likely to abandon their STEM major than students who did not receive any UV assignments. In terms of timing, students with a history of poor performance benefitted from writing a UV essay in the beginning of the semester, whereas higher-performing students benefitted from a UV essay at the end of the semester. Recommendations for practice are discussed.

Making Learning Personally Meaningful: A New Framework for Relevance Research.

Personal relevance goes by many names in the motivation literature, stemming from a number of theoretical frameworks. Currently these lines of research are being conducted in parallel with little synthesis across them, perhaps because there is no unifying definition of the relevance construct within which this research can be situated. In this paper we propose a new framework to synthesize existing research on relevance and provide a common platform for researchers to communicate and collaborate. In light of this new framework we review the role of relevance in three prominent theories in the motivation literature: the four-phase model of interest development (Hidi & Renninger, 2006), expectancy-value theory (Eccles et al., 1983), and self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985). We then explore eight relevance constructs commonly used in the literature and the educational interventions that derive from them. Finally, we offer a synthesis of these constructs and suggest some directions for future research.

Different Institutions and Different Values: Exploring First-Generation Student Fit at 2-Year Colleges.

First-generation (FG) college students (students for whom neither parent has a 4-year degree) face a number of challenges as they attempt to obtain a post-secondary degree. They are more likely to come from working-class backgrounds or poverty (Reardon, 2011) and attend lower quality high schools (Warburton et al., 2001) while not benefiting from the guidance of a parent who successfully navigated the path to higher education. FG college students also contend with belonging or "fitting in" concerns due a perceived mismatch between their own values and the values implicit in institutions of higher education (Stephens et al., 2012a). Specifically, prior research has demonstrated that FG college students face an unseen disadvantage that can be attributed to the fact that middle-class norms of independence reflected in American institutions of higher education can be experienced as threatening by many FG students who have been socialized with more interdependent values commonly espoused in working-class populations. The present research examines this theory (cultural mismatch theory) in the understudied context of 2-year colleges and tests if a values-affirmation intervention (i.e., an intervention that has shown promise in addressing identity threats and belonging concerns) can be effective for FG college students at these 2-year campuses. By considering the tenets of cultural mismatch theory in the creation of the values-affirmation interventions we were able to vary different aspects of the intervention in order to examine how its effectiveness may depend on the nature and magnitude of a perceived cultural mismatch. Results from surveying faculty and students at 2-year colleges indicated that compared to traditional 4-year institutions, the norms of 2-year colleges and the motivations of FG students may be different. That is, FG student motives may be more consistent (and thus less mismatched) with the cultural context of 2-year colleges which could result in fewer belonging concerns when compared to FG students at 4-year institutions. This may carry implications for the efficacy of values-affirmation interventions and could help explicate why FG students in the current sample perceived a greater match with their college when they reflected on their interdependent values.

Improving Student Outcomes in Higher Education: The Science of Targeted Intervention.

Many theoretically based interventions have been developed over the past two decades to improve educational outcomes in higher education. Based in social-psychological and motivation theories, well-crafted interventions have proven remarkably effective because they target specific educational problems and the processes that underlie them. In this review, we evaluate the current state of the literature on targeted interventions in higher education with an eye to emerging theoretical and conceptual questions about intervention science. We review three types of interventions, which focus on the value students perceive in academic tasks, their framing of academic challenges, and their personal values, respectively. We consider interventions that (a) target academic outcomes (e.g., grades, major or career plans, course taking, retention) in higher education, as well as the pipeline to college, and (b) have been evaluated in at least two studies. Finally, we discuss implications for intervention science moving forward.

Utility-Value Score: A Case Study in System Generalization for Writing Analytics.

Collection and analysis of students' writing samples on a large scale is a part of the research agenda of the emerging writing analytics community that promises to deliver an unprecedented insight into characteristics of student writing. Yet with a large scale often comes variability of contexts in which the samples were produced-different institutions, different purposes of writing, different author demographics, to name just a few possible dimensions of variation. What are the implications of such variation for the ability of automated methods to create indices/features based on the writing samples that would be valid and meaningful? This paper presents a case study in system generalization. Building on a system developed to assess the expression of utility value (a social-psychology-based construct) in essays written by first-year biology students at one postsecondary institution, we vary data parameters and observe system performance. From the point of view of social psychology, all these variants represent the same underlying construct (i.e., utility value), and it is thus very tempting to think that an automatically produced utility-value score could provide a meaningful analytic, consistently, on a large collection of essays. However, findings from this research show that there are challenges: Some variations are easier to deal with than others, and some components of the automated system generalize better than others. The findings are then discussed both in the context of the case study and more generally.

Broadening Participation in the Life Sciences with Social-Psychological Interventions.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have recently documented the positive effects of social-psychological interventions on the performance and retention of underrepresented students in the life sciences. We review two types of social-psychological interventions that address either students' well-being in college science courses or students' engagement in science content. Interventions that have proven effective in RCTs in science courses (namely, utility-value [UV] and values-affirmation [VA] interventions) emphasize different types of student values-students' perceptions of the value of curricular content and students' personal values that shape their educational experiences. Both types of value can be leveraged to promote positive academic outcomes for underrepresented students. For example, recent work shows that brief writing interventions embedded in the curriculum can increase students' perceptions of UV (the perceived importance or usefulness of a task for future goals) and dramatically improve the performance of first-generation (FG) underrepresented minority students in college biology. Other work has emphasized students' personal values in brief essays written early in the semester. This VA intervention has been shown to close achievement gaps for women in physics classes and for FG students in college biology. By reviewing recent research, considering which interventions are most effective for different groups, and examining the causal mechanisms driving these positive effects, we hope to inform life sciences educators about the potential of social-psychological interventions for broadening participation in the life sciences.

Affirming independence: Exploring mechanisms underlying a values affirmation intervention for first-generation students.

First-generation college students (students for whom neither parent has a 4-year college degree) earn lower grades and worry more about whether they belong in college, compared with continuing-generation students (who have at least 1 parent with a 4-year college degree). We conducted a longitudinal follow-up of participants from a study in which a values-affirmation intervention improved performance in a biology course for first-generation college students, and found that the treatment effect on grades persisted 3 years later. First-generation students in the treatment condition obtained a GPA that was, on average, .18 points higher than first-generation students in the control condition, 3 years after values affirmation was implemented (Study 1A). We explored mechanisms by testing whether the values-affirmation effects were predicated on first-generation students reflecting on interdependent values (thus affirming their values that are consistent with working-class culture) or independent values (thus affirming their values that are consistent with the culture of higher education). We found that when first-generation students wrote about their independence, they obtained higher grades (both in the semester in which values affirmation was implemented and in subsequent semesters) and felt less concerned about their background. In a separate laboratory experiment (Study 2) we manipulated the extent to which participants wrote about independence and found that encouraging first-generation students to write more about their independence improved their performance on a math test. These studies highlight the potential of having FG students focus on their own independence. (PsycINFO Database Record

Closing achievement gaps with a utility-value intervention: Disentangling race and social class.

Many college students abandon their goal of completing a degree in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) when confronted with challenging introductory-level science courses. In the U.S., this trend is more pronounced for underrepresented minority (URM) and first-generation (FG) students, and contributes to persisting racial and social-class achievement gaps in higher education. Previous intervention studies have focused exclusively on race or social class, but have not examined how the 2 may be confounded and interact. This research therefore investigates the independent and interactive effects of race and social class as moderators of an intervention designed to promote performance, measured by grade in the course. In a double-blind randomized experiment conducted over 4 semesters of an introductory biology course (N = 1,040), we tested the effectiveness of a utility-value intervention in which students wrote about the personal relevance of course material. The utility-value intervention was successful in reducing the achievement gap for FG-URM students by 61%: the performance gap for FG-URM students, relative to continuing generation (CG)-Majority students, was large in the control condition, .84 grade points (d = .98), and the treatment effect for FG-URM students was .51 grade points (d = 0.55). The UV intervention helped students from all groups find utility value in the course content, and mediation analyses showed that the process of writing about utility value was particularly powerful for FG-URM students. Results highlight the importance of intersectionality in examining the independent and interactive effects of race and social class when evaluating interventions to close achievement gaps and the mechanisms through which they may operate. (PsycINFO Database Record

Interest Matters: The Importance of Promoting Interest in Education.

Interest is a powerful motivational process that energizes learning, guides academic and career trajectories, and is essential to academic success. Interest is both a psychological state of attention and affect toward a particular object or topic, and an enduring predisposition to reengage over time. Integrating these two definitions, the four-phase model of interest development guides interventions that promote interest and capitalize on existing interests. Four interest-enhancing interventions seem useful: attention-getting settings, contexts evoking prior individual interest, problem-based learning, and enhancing utility value. Promoting interest can contribute to a more engaged, motivated, learning experience for students.