Thursday, June 22, 2023
Location: Weiser Hall – 500 Church St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Zoom links for available hybrid sessions are listed in the schedule.
All times listed are in ET.
Breakfast & Meet-Ups
9:00 – 10:00 AM, Weiser Hall – 10th Floor Event Space, In-Person Only
Parallel Session 3: Please choose one of the 3 following rooms
10:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Weiser Hall 5th Floor – Room 555
Zoom: Click here | Moderator: Dr. Becky Matz
10:00 – 10:20 am
RESEARCH TALK: Effect of a Concurrent Enrollment Preparatory Course on Student Achievement and Persistence in General Chemistry
Presenter: Dr. Kameryn Denaro, kdenaro@uci.edu
Description: A concurrent preparatory course was developed for a university-level general chemistry course to replace prerequisite classes and online exercises implemented in previous years. The concurrent preparatory course was structured with 3 hours of active learning class time. Lecture content was delivered asynchronously online. Topics were chosen on the basis of fundamental topics needed to succeed in general chemistry. Topics included both those typically found in a preparatory chemistry class as well as some simpler topics being taught in the first course of general chemistry. Two cohorts of students in a program designed to facilitate minoritized student achievement in biological sciences were compared. In the initial year of this study, a prerequisite online homework module was required. In the following year, the concurrent preparatory course was required. Students who took concurrent preparatory course did significantly better on the common final exam than those who did not.
10:20 – 10:40 am
RESEARCH TALK: Designing and building equitable large classes using student feedback
Presenters: Dr. Madeleine Gonin (mgonin@iu.edu) & Dr. Nikeetha Farfan D’Souza (nfarfand@iu.edu)
Description: We used a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) model to support instructors who teach large courses. The overarching goals of the consecutive year-long FLCs were to develop equitable and inclusive classrooms that support the learning of all students. The FLCs also aimed to reduce DFW rates, improve student sense of belonging, and incorporate student voice into the design of these large courses. Instructors in the most recent FLC gathered and analyzed feedback from their students in Fall 2022 and used the data to design easy-to-implement interventions for Spring 2023 that could transform their course to increase equity and enhance academic success. FLC members received support from the facilitators and collaborators to analyze student feedback in large classes (100+ students) using natural language processing tools available in the qualitative data analysis software NVivo. Thematic analysis informed the identification of interventions, which faculty selected and developed in collaboration with the facilitators. Intervention design includes an assessment component to inform the impact it had on the student experience. All instructors used surveys at the beginning of the semester to get to know their students and collect pre-intervention data. Spring 2023 interventions include determining student reading behaviors and motivation, student self-efficacy with problem-solving in Chemistry, and increasing access to office hours and student support for completing out-of-class work. In this session the FLC facilitators will share the results of the FLC, discuss details about the classroom interventions, as well as lessons learned for those who want to facilitate similar FLCs at their institutions.
10:40 – 11:00 am
RESEARCH TALK: Toward Student-Centered Assessment in Large-Enrollment General Chemistry
Presenter: Dr. Sean Garrett-Roe, sgr@pitt.edu
Description: While substantial progress has been made toward student-centered classrooms, the assessment of student learning has remained mired in teacher-centered approaches for many reasons. New approaches to the assessment of student learning based on aligned core principles are emerging. Enacting these principles will be illustrated with our recent implementation of Mastery-based grading in a large-enrollment, first-term general chemistry course.
In fall 2021 and 2022, the assessment and grading schemes of a large-enrollment General Chemistry course were transformed: the assessments were aligned to explicit learning objectives; the objectives are categorized according to Marzano’s Taxonomy (Retrieval, Comprehension, Analysis, or Knowledge Utilization); students’ responses were scored as proficient or not proficient (no partial credit); and students had three attempts at each learning objective. The data show that the assessment scheme increases student’s motivation to study for the course (self-report) and that students improve based on multiple opportunities.
To achieve this intervention at scale, a question bank with hundreds of question templates was developed to programmatically generate randomized questions.
We envision this platform as a tool for instructors looking for a high-quality database of assessment questions that are aligned and validated at different levels of Marzano’s taxonomy. We hope to use this tool as a basis for further research to identify what helps students learn to be resilient and develop a growth mindset (rather than a grade mindset).
The potential areas for collaboration will be highlighted, including disseminating the transformation to other institutions and measuring the impact on student motivation and mindset.
11:00 – 11:20 am
Break and optional meditation video
11:20 – 11:40 am
RESEARCH TALK: Targeted messaging to promote participation in academic support program
Presenter: Dr. Corrin Clarkson, cjclarks@indiana.iu
Description: Creating effective academic support programs requires both creating something that is beneficial to students and convincing students to participate. This study focuses on the latter challenge for the Indiana University PASS program.
The PASS program offers small peer-led study sessions for students in a variety of introductory mathematics courses. This program uses the well-established Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) model which has been shown to increase student success generally and can be especially effective for students from marginalized groups. Previous studies of the IU PASS program showed a positive association between PASS attendance and end of course grades. However, PASS session attendance data also reveal a significant drop off in attendance after the first exam in week four of the term.
In a Fall 2022 pilot study, targeted mid-semester email messages promoting the PASS program were sent to students in specific sections of finite mathematics. The effectiveness of this intervention was measured using both PASS attendance data and course grades.
This session will present the findings of this research and how the results are being used to inform messaging in future semesters. We will also present a holistic approach that IU is taking with program assessment – using a variety of methodologies such as distance-based matching methods, mixed-effects models, and business process analytics to create a data-informed feedback loop to support the continuous improvement of programs like PASS.
11:40 am – 12:00 pm
RESEARCH TALK: Behavioral nudges in introductory STEM courses
Presenter: Dr. Becky Matz, rlmatz@umich.edu
Description: This presentation will report on quantitative outcomes from the use of behavioral nudges in introductory STEM courses implemented via ECoach, a learner-centered software tool that offers tailored feedback to students. Behavioral nudges can provide information, structure, or assistance for making decisions, and they tend to be low-cost, non-coercive, and easy to ignore. Nudges within ECoach take a variety of forms, from multi-dose emails that encourage students to make multiple attempts at mastery-based assessments and projects to interactive visualizations of points and grades that may encourage students to make decisions more actively. We will report on this range of outcomes across introductory STEM courses as well as opportunities for the implementation of new nudge interventions.
12:00 – 12:20 pm
RESEARCH TALK: The effect of multiple assessment opportunities on student success and equity in a large general chemistry course
Presenter: Dr. Jill Robinson, jirobins@iu.edu
Description: General chemistry I at Indiana University is often the first chemistry course taken by students and can be an overwhelming experience due to the rigorous content and large class size ( >650 students). While active engagement with the material and multiple opportunities to demonstrate content mastery are beneficial to student learning, implementing these pedagogical methods in a large enrollment course is challenging. In this course, the structure was changed to increase active engagement using 1-2 flipped learning sessions per week. Undergraduate teaching interns were introduced to lower the instructor-to-student ratio to promote effective facilitation of these sessions. The practical implementation of the course restructuring and additional assessments (exam retakes) will be described. The effect of these changes on student success, equity, and sense of belonging over two semesters will be discussed.
Weiser Hall 4th Floor – Room 455
Zoom: Click here | Moderator: Dr. Kyle Small
10:00 – 11:00 am
WORKSHOP: ECoach Part 2: Partner Success Stories – How to Personalize Education on Your Own Campus
Presenters: Kyle Small (ksmall@umich.edu), Ben Hayward (haywardb@umich.edu), Holly Derry (hderry@umich.edu)
Description: ECoach Success Stories: Hear from our ECoach collaborators at five other institutions about their ECoach journey. They’ll share how they use ECoach, present findings, and share advice for new users. Attend the “Potential User Power Hour” to ask existing partners questions, if you’re considering adopting ECoach.
This session is open to all SEISMIC participants and potential ECoach partners. Attending the ECoach Part 1 session on Wednesday 6/21 is highly encouraged but not required.
11:00 – 11:20 am
Break and optional meditation video
11:20 – 11:40 am
RESEARCH TALK: Digital Backchannels and Student Belonging in Undergraduate STEM Courses: Early Findings and Potential Actions
Presenter: William Nicholas Bork Rodriguez, borkwill@msu.edu
Description: Many students in first-year STEM courses struggle with their sense of belonging. This phenomenon is more acute for students from traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM courses (e.g., women, international students, etc.). The use of an anonymous digital backchannel may help to bolster students’ sense of belonging by providing them with an avenue to engage with their content, instructors, and classmates without the influence of the public gaze. This study investigates how an anonymous backchannel influences sense of belonging. The study design is quasi-experimental, whereas instructors taught one control semester without a backchannel followed by an intervention semester using the backchannel. Data were collected from 3 campuses and 9 courses. The study is ongoing with future data collection semesters scheduled for Fall 2023. However, early results are available for a subset of the data. This 20-minute research talk presents these early results and what implications they may have for STEM instructors.
11:40 am – 12:00 pm
RESEARCH TALK: Ecological belonging interventions to improve equity and inclusion in STEM courses
Presenter: Dr. Chandralekha Singh, clsingh@pitt.edu
Description: We will discuss how ecological belonging interventions can be adapted and implemented in STEM classes to make them more equitable and inclusive. These types of interventions are short, requiring less than one hour of regular class time even though they have the potential to impact student outcomes significantly—especially for underrepresented students in physics classes. We will present data from large introductory physics and biology courses showing the efficacy of such interventions.
12:00 – 12:30 pm
Open: Workspace
Weiser Hall 3rd Floor – Room 355
In-Person only
10:00 – 11:00 am
Interviews
11:00 – 11:20 am
Break and optional meditation video
11:20 am – 12:30 pm
Interviews
Lunch & Break
12:30 – 2:20 PM, Lunch: Campus & Break: Weiser Hall – 10th Floor Event Space, In-Person Only
12:30 – 2:00 pm
Lunch on your own
2:00 – 2:20 pm
Break and optional meditation video
2:20 – 3:30 pm
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: Beyond the Classroom: UT System’s Approach to Ensuring Equitable Opportunities for All Students to Achieve Educational and Post-Graduation Success
Presenter: Dr. Archie Holmes, aholmes@austin.utexas.edu
Biography: Archie Holmes joined The University of Texas System as Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs in October 2020. He provides oversight and guidance for the eight UT System academic institutions, who enroll more than 240,000 students.
Prior to joining U. T. System, Archie was the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Virginia and was a faculty member at both the University of Virginia and The University of Texas at Austin. As Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, he served as chief advisor to and representative of the executive vice president and provost in academic matters related to the curriculum and general health and welfare of the academic units. Over this career, Archie has co-authored over 110 referred technical articles and 70 conference presentations and received numerous awards for his teaching and advising activities.
Dr. Holmes received his bachelor’s and PhD degrees, both in electrical engineering, from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California at Santa Barbara respectively.
Description: In this keynote and interactive discussion, I will highlight efforts of the UT institutions and Offices within the University of Texas System (UT System) to ensure that STEM programs are environments where when all students feel included, valued, accepted, and connected. Through the use of research- and data-driven analyses that drive continuous improvement, our ultimate goal is to provide the support needed for our students’ intellectual and social development while on campus and the broad education, knowledge, and specific skills need to ensure long-term success in their personal and professional lives.
Group Picture
3:30 – 4:00 PM – Angell Hall
Poster Reception
4:00 – 5:30 PM – Location: LSA Multipurpose Room
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: How does a cohort-based program support STEM students with fewer systemic advantages?
Presenter: Dr. Ryan Sweeder, sweeder@msu.edu
Description: Through the support of several NSF S-STEM grants, Lyman Briggs College at Michigan State University built a decade-long program designed to support STEM students in career exploration. The SPRING program supported students by providing financial aid, facilitating peer support, guiding them in exploring career options, and developing professional skills. The program focused on students with high academic potential and demonstrable financial need. The majority of scholars also were members of historically marginalized students (e.g., woman, first-generation). A quantitative analysis of the outcomes for our 97 scholars indicated that the percentage of SPRING scholars completing STEM degrees was 12 percent higher than a comparison population.
For first-generation students, the SPRING scholars remained in STEM retention at higher rates, yet the graduation rates remained unchanged. The program also led to an increase in the graduation and STEM retention rates for both majority and minority students. To understand how the program caused these increases, we undertook a qualitative assessment of the student experiences. Through exploring three student case studies, we noted that the primary mechanisms included (1) developing psychological attributes (e.g., self-efficacy), (2) providing material resources, (3) creating a sense of belonging with supportive relationships, and (4) knowledge acquisition.
The synthesis of our quantitative and qualitative findings led us to the development of the Determination of STEM Retention Model of student retention. This model highlights that students’ social capital and social cohesion are critical considerations in understanding the impact of a program. Our model may be helpful for those who are interested in developing or adapting programs to better support students from less privileged backgrounds.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: P3: A pilot STEM postdoctoral training program to support early-career scientists
Presenter: Dr. Nate Emery, nemery@ucsb.edu
Description: Postdoctoral researchers in the sciences are increasing in number while the traditional career route to tenure-track faculty positions stagnates. Given the breadth of career options available, but often limited training, postdocs are challenged by a system that is not built to help them succeed. Across academia, postdocs could benefit from complementary training and career preparation that empowers them to accomplish their career goals in a variety of fields and disciplines. At UC Santa Barbara, unlike many other research-focused institutions, we do not have a dedicated office to advocate and implement programming and support for postdocs. They often have to take advantage of graduate student programming for professional development and career preparation, despite being at a very different professional and personal life stage. This year we designed, vetted, and implemented a program to promote postdoc progress and prepare STEM postdocs for a variety of career options. The curriculum focuses on skills that are complementary to their research training such as teaching, mentoring, collaboration, and project management, and guides them through the development of job application materials and approaching job interviews. The pilot program occurred this past spring (April-June) of 2023 and we will be sharing some of the preliminary results and outcome from program participants.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Leveraging Computational Science Students’ Coding Strengths for Mathematics Learning
Presenter: Sarah Castle, gadysara@msu.edu
Description: The nebulous relationship between mathematics and computation in education has led to questions surrounding computational science students’ experiences in mathematics courses. However, many of these conversations are framed in terms of students’ misconceptions or their ‘poor mathematical skills’. In contrast, I propose leveraging student’s computational strengths as a pedagogical approach for creating relevant and engaging mathematics experiences. In order to build an understanding of the ways in which computation affects student’s experience and understanding of mathematics, I adapted a framework designed to link student’s computational experiences and attitudes by adding explicit linkage to these mathematical experiences. Then I developed a series of Jupyter notebooks focused on introducing linear algebra through computing. This study followed computational science students as they worked through the modules in small groups across six weeks. They completed weekly reflections, and pre/post-study interviews. The theoretical framework was operationalized as an analytical framework to link student experience and attitudes. Results highlighted the shift in students’ views of the nature of mathematics, their abilities, and the interplay between disciplines. The computational environment enabled students to naturally consider multiple solution paths, develop resilience, and enhanced their ability to explore mathematical concepts in a novel way. This was in contrast with students’ initial views that framed mathematics as a set series of steps and formulas to follow. This study both provides a novel perspective in the discourse surrounding research on computational students’ experiences in mathematics and highlights the pedagogical power of computing as a novel environment for learning mathematics.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Transforming Institutions Through STEM Equity Learning Communities: Details on the new SEISMIC Collaboration NSF IUSE Grant
Presenter: Ashley Atkinson, atkinash@umich.edu
Description: This project aims to serve the national interest by improving STEM education outcomes using a department-level approach to address systemic inequities that create barriers to student success. Introductory STEM courses consistently reproduce inequities for historically marginalized students. However, it is common among those involved in STEM education, including faculty, administrators, and even students themselves, to view these inequities as resulting from student deficits. This “blame-the-victim” mindset creates a significant barrier for STEM education reform as attempts to address inequities often focus on “fixing” the students, rather than on creating systemic change in courses and departments. This project will test a department-oriented approach for changing the student-deficit mindsets present in faculty, administrators, and undergraduate students. By guiding participants in recognizing the structural role that courses and departments play in student success, and documenting the process in the form of a guide, this project will allow new and different institutions to adapt this field-tested approach for their local contexts, driving dialogue in STEM departments on approaches for examining student academic outcomes through an equity lens. Leveraging the existing relationships and past work of the multi-institutional Sloan Equity and Inclusion in STEM Introductory Courses (SEISMIC) collaboration, this project plans to develop and share a standard menu of equity measures that should provide a benchmark for universities seeking to measure equity in their courses and departments. The overall objective of this proposal is to establish STEM Equity Learning Communities (SELCs) in universities across the U.S. that will foster impactful approaches for engaging faculty, department leaders, and undergraduate students in equity-minded discussions of their STEM courses.The project hopes to generate knowledge on how well and in what context SELCs can develop equity-mindedness in faculty, department leaders, and undergraduate students across ten large, public, R1 universities and can empower them to promote this mindset in their departments.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Investigating the influence of assessment question framing on undergraduate biology student preference and affect
Presenter: Dr. Jeremy Hsu, hsu@chapman.edu
Description: Nearly all undergraduate biology courses rely on quizzes and exams. Despite their prevalence, very little work has been done to explore how the framing of assessment questions may influence student performance and affect. Here, we conduct a quasi-random experimental study where students in different sections of the same course were given isomorphic questions that varied in their framing of experimental scenarios. One section was provided a description using the self-referential term “you”, placing the student in the experiment; another section received the same scenario that used classmate names; while a third section’s scenario integrated counterstereotypical scientist names. Our results demonstrate that there was no difference in performance throughout the semester between the sections, nor were there differences in students’ self-reported stress and identity. However, students in all three sections indicated that they most preferred the self-referential framing, providing a variety of reasons that suggest that these variants may influence how well a student reads and processes the question. In addition, our results also indicate that the framing of these scenarios can also have a large impact on some students’ affect and attitude toward the question. We conclude by discussing implications for the biology education research community and biology instructors.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Correct streaks in Problem Roulette are the best predictor of course performance
Presenter: Dr. Mark Mills, marmills@umich.edu
Description: Problem Roulette (PR) supports student engagement with practice forced-choice exam questions in a points-free environment. PR also aims to offer study tips, which requires an understanding of helpful student behaviors in PR (i.e., those that boost the final course grade point earned; GPE). Here we ask if streaks (runs of either correctly or incorrectly answered questions) predict GPE. In a sample of 25,907 students and 23,897 questions across 29 courses, we measure mean and max streak size as well as the fractions of (in)correct streaks and questions. Using decision tree modeling and linear mixed modeling, we find that streaks of correctly answered questions are more predictive of course performance than the same number of unsequenced correctly answered questions. The predictive advantage of streaks is likely a proxy for well-engaged, intentional study behavior (cf. trial-error-learning). Two ways to increase the fraction of correct streak questions are for students to have more and/or longer streaks.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Real-world effectiveness of a social-psychological intervention translated from controlled trials to classrooms
Presenter: Holly Derry, hderry@umich.edu
Description: The Exam Playbook is an ECoach tool that helps students strategize and plan their study resource use before exams. Here, we studied the impact of the Exam Playbook among 12,065 college students in 14 large, lower-division STEM courses. We find that students who completed the playbook benefitted by an average of 2.17 exam percentage points compared to non-users. Further, we find that the playbook is even more effective when more classmates use it and when teachers encourage its use, when students use it earlier so they have more time to study, for women, and when students use it for each exam.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: How Do Students’ Sources of Grade Confidence Change over Time?
Presenter: Alaa Shahin, alaash@umich.edu
Description: Especially in large STEM courses, women tend to report lower grade confidence than men, and lower confidence has been found to correlate with actual course grades. Grade confidence, or academic self-efficacy, can be ascribed to four sources: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasions, and physical and emotional states. While gendered differences in sources of self-efficacy have been observed, less is known about the extent to which students’ sources of self-efficacy change in a course over time, and if these changes are gendered. In this study, we aim to understand how these sources change over time for high- versus low-confidence students, and for women versus men. We solicited participants (N = 25) from Winter 2023 ECoach courses and interviewed them longitudinally over the semester; data cleaning and analysis are ongoing. The interview data will be complemented with broader quantitative confidence and self-efficacy data from the beginning- and end-of-term ECoach surveys, and new ECoach content and interventions will be developed based on the resulting themes.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Testing the Effectiveness of Tandem in Assessing and Supporting Inclusive and Equitable Teamwork in Engineering
Presenter: Dr. Robin Fowler, rootsr@umich.edu
Description: Learning how to work effectively in a team is clearly an important goal for preparing undergraduate engineering students, but supporting inclusive teamwork remains challenging. Marginalization on teams has been linked to aspects of students’ social identity, such as identifying as a woman or person of color, and takes a variety of forms, including ideas going unheard or being pushed into more menial tasks. Particularly in introductory courses and at large colleges and universities, engineering instructors face the additional hurdle of having many students and student teams. With these compounding factors, it is difficult for instructors, and even students themselves, to be aware in real-time when inequitable behaviors are occurring on their teams, and to know how to address them. The objective of this project overall is to study the effectiveness of Tandem in assessing and supporting inclusive and equitable teamwork in engineering. Tandem is a digital pedagogical tool developed at the University of Michigan, which delivers tailored lessons to students about effective teamwork and provides feedback to students and instructors about team performance, through an equity and inclusion lens. Here we present results from our initial project activities, including explorations of project confidence and equity of voice.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Does it matter how we calculate the grade point average in other courses?
Presenter: Dr. Nick Young, ntyoung@umich.edu
Description: Grade point average in “other” courses (GPAO) is an increasingly common measure used to control for prior academic performance and to predict future academic performance. Typically, GPAO is calculated either using only courses taken concurrently (term GPAO) or using all previous courses taken (cumulative GPAO). To our knowledge, no one has studied whether these methods for calculating the GPAO result in equivalent analyses and conclusions. As researchers often use one definition or the other without comment on why that choice was made, if the two calculations of GPAO are different, we might be inducing systematic error into our results and publishing potentially inaccurate conclusions. We looked at more than 3,700 courses at a public, research-intensive university over a decade and found limited evidence that the choice of GPAO calculation affects the conclusions. At most, one in seven courses could be affected. Further analysis suggests that there may be situations where one form of GPAO may be preferred over the other when it comes to examining inequity in courses or predicting student grades. However, we did not find sufficient evidence to universally recommend one form of GPAO over the other.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Developing a “Program Equity Report”
Presenter: Dr. Nick Young, ntyoung@umich.edu
Description: Students enrolling in higher education have become increasingly diverse but not all students have an equal opportunity to earn their degree. Students with historically marginalized genders, races, and ethnicities receive lower grades in STEM courses, are more likely to switch from a STEM to a non-STEM major and are less likely to earn a STEM degree than their majoritized peers. In parallel, researchers have increasingly more access to universities’ institutional data and student learning data, offering unprecedented insight into student outcomes. There is then a significant opportunity to use institutional data for understanding and addressing equity gaps across the curriculum in higher education. Yet, there are significant barriers around assessing, analyzing, and interpreting institutional data for equity that prevent large scale adoption. At the University of Michigan, we’ve developed a “Program Equity Report” to lower these barriers. These customizable reports integrate data about grades, time to degree, and degree outcomes across a major or program along with explanatory text and guiding questions to promote reflection about how structures in the major or program may contribute to the observed trends. Built with R Markdown, these reports can easily be customized for a specific set of courses or majors with minimal programming or analytics knowledge.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Atlas Student Choice Patterns
Presenter: Dr. Nate Cradit, ncradit@umich.edu
Description: Almost all U-M undergraduate students use Atlas to learn more about course offerings, faculty, and other curricular data, particularly as they build their course schedules each semester. Here, we ask how this kind of curricular data transparency influences how students choose courses. We interviewed 26 students from 11 U-M schools and colleges with a cognitive think-aloud interview protocol. Students shared their screen and thought out loud as they built their Fall 2023 course schedules using Atlas, narrating their reactions to data and decision-making processes in real-time. A post-task debrief allowed for shared sensemaking and probing questions. Overall, we find that students are empowered to make smart, meaningful academic choices when a tool offers curricular data transparency. Students primarily consider indicators of course workload and grade history among available data. Workload in particular is often used as a way of seeking balance among course commitments, particularly for students who perceive their majors as demanding. Students generally interpret Atlas data through nuanced data literacy skills and understand the subjective and flawed nature of student course evaluations. They contextualize their Atlas use with this awareness. By reducing institution-student information asymmetry, Atlas empowers students to select courses they believe will best position them to succeed in a variety of aspects, including time commitment, faculty characteristics, and support for diverse learners.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Synergy between Service Learning and Course based Undergraduate Research Experiences in Promoting Scientific Research Interest
Presenter: Eduardo L. Gonzalez Nino, laloglz@ucsb.edu
Description: The current challenges faced by today’s society highlight the need for a more scientifically literate and trained population. To meet this demand, STEM fields need to increase the recruitment of scientists and STEM workers, especially those from diverse backgrounds who have been historically marginalized in these professional fields. Current efforts to promote diversification of STEM fields primarily focuses on deficit models that aim to “fix” underpreparedness or lack of access; however, this approach misses the opportunity to capitalize on the strengths that these individuals bring to STEM fields. Those hailing from historically marginalized groups tend to value communal more than agentic goals which often are perceived to be at odds in pursuing STEM degrees. The biased representation of science in the media and lack of authentic scientific research experiences in the classroom make it hard for diverse individuals to see their personal goals fulfilled or to see themselves in scientific career paths aside from health care. In response, we propose that combining service learning (SL) with course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs), two high-impact practices that have been separately demonstrated to promote minoritized student retention in STEM fields, will produce a synergistic effect on student retention and perceptions of goal alignment with STEM career paths. Here we will present the qualitative analysis of post course structured short and long term interviews with students of course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs)with and without Service Learning (SL) pedagogical activities. We also will present the results of the “Goal Affordance Priority Sorting Exercise” an instrument developed to assess the impact of the synergistic effect of CUREs and SL practices on individual’s perceptions of goals achievable through scientific research. Our results provide ideas for faculty in diverse settings to incorporate community-engaged learning to bridge historical barriers that separate communities from STEM academic research.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: The role of personalised feedback and support in cultivating belonging and equity in a STEM course
Presenter: Dr. Lisa-Angelique Lim, lisa-angelique.lim@uts.edu.au
Description: A sense of belonging is key to students’ success and retention in any learning environment. In STEM courses, research highlights that students’ belonging affects their motivation to learn and ultimately, their decision to stay in the discipline. Faculty interactions with students have been found to be instrumental in fostering student belonging and supporting their learning. This poster presents an exploratory case study of a teacher’s initiatives to foster students’ belonging in a postgraduate, online STEM course which had a diverse enrolment (cultural background, entry pathways, prior knowledge, and age). To foster belonging within such a diverse context, the main interventions were: (1) feedback support personalised to student progress; and (2) an interactive learning design to give all students a voice in the virtual learning environment, and to enable them to feel valued. The feedback and support were specially designed to promote equity and equality in the course – equality in that all students received quality feedback that was timely and personalised to their ongoing progress throughout the teaching semester, as well as targeted to improve the learning process and showed care; equity in that students who needed greater support were offered more personalised advice and resources to build their motivation and help them succeed. The following research question guided the study: How did students see the role of their personalised feedback emails in enhancing their learning experience and belonging? Qualitative data were collected through surveys and focus groups, and analysed using thematic analysis. An important finding was that the personalised feedback and support was highly influential in fostering connectedness between the faculty and students, which had a positive impact on students’ motivation to learn in the course. This poster will also showcase the design of the rule-based messages that were communicated to students at different levels of their progress.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: SEISMIC Scholars: Values and Improvement, An Investigative Report
Presenter: Kal Holder, holder9@purdue.edu
Description: The SEISMIC Scholars Program is a paid 10-week summer program with three key components: mentorship, research, and professional development. Scholars engage in research focusing on the development of educational tools and the enhancement of equity and inclusion in large, STEM introductory courses alongside professional development and research skill training. This program aims to provide opportunities to students of marginalized identities to deepen their connections with and empower their success in STEM fields. This study serves as an evaluation of the SEISMIC Scholars Program to identify, quantify, and examine student-found value in the program alongside areas of improvement for future iterations. Weekly reflections were examined utilizing an iterative, qualitative approach. Primary themes were identified and, through an iterative process, refined into a codebook used to code the complete dataset. Post-survey evaluations were analyzed through quantitative methods, allowing post-survey data to be examined and compared. These findings were then aggregated to determine values and areas of improvement as identified by the Scholars. Scholars identified several areas of high value in the SEISMIC Scholars Program, including a greater understanding of research, the development of research skills, and the expansion of professional networks. Areas of improvement included a deeper understanding of research communication and design and a desire for greater interconnectedness amongst Scholars in their cohort. Illumination of strengths and weaknesses of the SEISMIC Scholars Program allows for critical examination and evaluation of the program. By deeply understanding the student perspective, SEISMIC can make the SEISMIC Scholars Program an even more impactful experience for young researchers of marginalized identities, providing opportunities that Scholars may not otherwise be able to access. By doing so, the SEISMIC Scholars Program promotes a more diverse and equitable generation of scientists, researchers, and learners.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
POSTER: Institutional Posters
Presenter: Ashley Atkinson, atkinash@umich.edu
Description: One poster will be created for each institution, focusing on how that campus interacts with SEISMIC. Every poster will have information on SELCs and Weeks of SEISMIC and then the rest of each poster will focus on what that campus’s members have done. Members of that institution will be asked about which activities they want to highlight. Posters will have a cohesive theme combining both SEISMIC and institutional colors. These posters may not be in the poster session itself, but could be hung in a hallway to help direct attendees or allow them to browse during a different part of the meeting.