Creating inclusive classrooms by engaging STEM faculty in culturally responsive teaching workshops.

BACKGROUND: As higher education institutions strive to effectively support an increasingly diverse student body, they will be called upon to provide their faculty with tools to teach more inclusively, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms where recruitment and retention of students from underrepresented and disadvantaged groups present long-standing challenges. Pedagogical training approaches to creating inclusive classrooms involve interventions that raise awareness of student and instructor social identities and explore barriers to learning, such as implicit bias, microaggressions, stereotype threat, and fixed mindset. Such efforts should focus on embracing diversity as an asset leveraged to benefit all students in their learning. In this paper, we describe the impact of multiday, off-campus immersion workshops designed to impart faculty with these tools. Based on analysis of workshop participant data, we report the resulting changes in faculty knowledge of factors affecting classroom climate and student success in STEM, attitudes about students, and motivation to adopt new teaching practices aimed at fostering equitable and culturally responsive learning environments. RESULTS: Key findings indicate that attendees (1) increased their knowledge of social identities and the barriers to learning in STEM classrooms, particularly those faced by students from underrepresented groups in STEM or socioeconomically challenged backgrounds; (2) changed their attitudes about students' abilities as science majors, shifting away from a fixed-mindset perspective in which characteristics, such as intelligence, are perceived as innate and unalterable; and (3) modified their teaching approaches to promote inclusivity and cultural responsiveness. CONCLUSION: Faculty members, who are linchpins in the evolution of college classrooms into settings that provide students with equitable opportunities to succeed academically in STEM, can benefit from participating in immersion workshops structured to support their awareness of issues affecting classroom culture related to race/ethnicity, LGBTQ status, religious affiliation, ability, socioeconomic status, and other social identities that contribute to disparities in STEM achievement and persistence.

Student Satisfaction and Learning Outcomes in Asynchronous Online Lecture Videos.

Our study identified online lecture video styles that improved student engagement and satisfaction, while maintaining high learning outcomes in online education. We presented different lecture video styles with standardized material to students and then measured learning outcomes and satisfaction with a survey and summative assessment. We created an iterative qualitative coding scheme, "coding online asynchronous lectures" (COAL), to analyze open-ended student survey responses. Our results reveal that multimedia learning can be satisfying and effective. Students have strong preferences for certain video styles despite their equal learning outcomes, with the Learning Glass style receiving the highest satisfaction ratings. Video styles that were described as impersonal and unfamiliar were rated poorly, while those that were described as personal and engaging and evoked positive affective responses were rated highly. The students in our study rated lecture video styles that aligned with Mayer's multimedia learning principles as highly satisfying, indicating that student feedback can be a valuable resource for course designers to consider as they design their own online courses. Finally, we provide guidelines for creating engaging, effective, and satisfying asynchronous lecture videos to support establishment of best practices in online instruction.

Comparing the Impact of Course-Based and Apprentice-Based Research Experiences in a Life Science Laboratory Curriculum.

This four-year study describes the assessment of a bifurcated laboratory curriculum designed to provide upper-division undergraduate majors in two life science departments meaningful exposure to authentic research. The timing is critical as it provides a pathway for both directly admitted and transfer students to enter research. To fulfill their degree requirements, all majors complete one of two paths in the laboratory program. One path immerses students in scientific discovery experienced through team research projects (course-based undergraduate research experiences, or CUREs) and the other path through a mentored, independent research project (apprentice-based research experiences, or AREs). The bifurcated laboratory curriculum was structured using backwards design to help all students, irrespective of path, achieve specific learning outcomes. Over 1,000 undergraduates enrolled in the curriculum. Self-report survey results indicate that there were no significant differences in affective gains by path. Students conveyed which aspects of the curriculum were critical to their learning and development of research-oriented skills. Students' interests in biology increased upon completion of the curriculum, inspiring a subset of CURE participants to subsequently pursue further research. A rubric-guided performance evaluation, employed to directly measure learning, revealed differences in learning gains for CURE versus ARE participants, with evidence suggesting a CURE can reduce the achievement gap between high-performing students and their peers.