GATEWAY Learning in Biology.
Alison Crowe, Mary Pat Wenderoth, and Scott Freeman.
submitted to NSF CCLI Phase I, May 2009

Project Summary
Can hypothesis-driven research produce teaching materials that will improve student performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)? This project tests the effectiveness of Guided Group Activities To Enhance Ways of Learning in Biology (GATEWAY Learning in Biology). We propose to develop and test GATEWAY activities—in-class, pencil-and-paper exercises done by small groups in a large lecture setting—designed to increase student understanding of three particularly important and difficult concepts for college majors in introductory biology: selection thinking, tree thinking, and principles of experimental design. These concepts are fundamental but are susceptible to well-documented misconceptions and teaching problems.

Intellectual Merit
The research contributes to “scientific teaching”—the effort to design courses and instructional materials based on well-designed experiments that test alternative strategies for maximizing student learning. The work is one of the first examples of “2nd-generation” research in STEM education, where investigators test alternative active learning exercises instead of comparing active-learning to passive-learning approaches.
The project’s focus on guided, in-class activities done by informal small groups applies aspects of studio/workshop, case-based learning, and POGIL instructional models to the large lecture setting. The GATEWAY exercises will be added to a large-enrollment course at the University of Washington (UW) that has implemented innovations such as peer TAs, weekly practice exams, automated response systems (clickers), and inquiry-based labs, but not extensive small-group work. The guided activities will also be used in a small lecture class at a 2-year community college to test their effectiveness in a different student population, class size, and institutional setting. Analysis of students’ written responses and observations of student interactions in the two settings will guide re-design and re-testing of the activities, with the goal of developing materials that have a significant impact on student learning and potential for widespread dissemination. Involvement of numerous undergraduates will deepen the project’s intellectual merit by: (1) providing a conduit for student feedback on the design of the in-class activities, (2) exposing students to STEM education research early in their careers, and (3) providing insight into students’ thought processes that lead to misconceptions of key concepts in biology.

Broader Impact
The GATEWAY activities developed and tested in this research have the potential to impact the approximately 300,000 students who take introductory biology in the U.S. each year. As active-learning materials like these improve student performance, the percentage of underrepresented minority and underprepared students who flourish in introductory biology is rising dramatically. The use of graduate students as research assistants and undergraduates as research advisors for this study helps broaden the base of young professionals with experience in STEM education research. Thanks to extensive collaboration and dissemination work, the project supports the development of a growing and vibrant STEM education research network in the U.S.
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SPARST: Assessing the Process of Science

Clarissa Dirks, The Evergreen State College
Mary Pat Wenderoth, University of Washington
submitted to NSF-CCLi phase I , May 23, 2009

Science process and reasoning skills, such as graphing, data analysis, experimental design, scientific writing, and basic statistics, are crucial components of undergraduate life science curricula as these skills provide the conceptual framework that allows students to develop a deep understanding of science. However, no tool currently exists to assess these skills. The goal of this project is to create, validate, and disseminate an assessment tool (SPARST) that will allow life science faculty to assess students’ acquisition of science process and reasoning skills at both lower and higher cognitive levels.
Intellectual merit:
Faculty view undergraduate acquisition of science process and reasoning skills as very important, and students who learn these skills early in their undergraduate education perform better (see project description; Dirks and Cunningham, 2006). Thus, there is a need to better assess how and when students learn these skills. Without an appropriate tool to assess our teaching of skills, we can only assume that students somehow acquire these skills in their education, which tends to focus primarily on content. We propose to develop SPARST – a reliable, valid, and comprehensive test – to assess students’ understanding and mastery of science process skills. SPARST will help faculty a) better gauge the skill level of incoming students, b) revise undergraduate curricula to better address the teaching of skills along with content, c) create a national network for sharing skill-teaching practices and resources, and d) improve the general science literacy of both science majors and non-majors. SPARST will also help to inform faculty of their effectiveness at teaching skills, resulting in students who are better prepared to enter graduate school or careers in science.
Broader Impact:
This project will enhance diversity in science and improve general science literacy. The lack of science process skills may be an important determinant of which students are at greatest risk for failing introductory courses in the life sciences. At many institutions, such as the University of Washington, undergraduates who are underrepresented minorities or first generation and economically disadvantaged fail introductory biology at twice the rate of other students. Our previous work showed that a) there is a positive correlation between science process skills and introductory biology grades at UW, and b) underrepresented/disadvantaged freshman who take a course specifically designed to teach science process skills have higher average grades in introductory biology than comparable students who do not take the course (Dirks and Cunningham, 2006). Considering that underrepresented groups, on average, tend to be less prepared for college introductory science courses than majority students, SPARST will help science educators to better assess the skill areas in which these students can improve in order to be more academically competitive.
The broader impacts resulting from the proposed activities will be to: 1. Assist under-prepared students in becoming more academically competitive, inclusive of the most underrepresented groups – first generation, economically disadvantaged students and underrepresented minorities. 2. Improve life science curricula by identifying a timeline and approach for teaching science process and reasoning skills in a scaffolding manner. 3. Encourage faculty to equally emphasize the learning of skills and content in their courses. 4. Expand faculty networks for disseminating SPARST and other materials that will improve the teaching of science process and reasoning skills to all students. 5. Enhance general science literacy through best practices for teaching the scientific process to both majors and non-majors.