Presentations: Session F

The inclusion of active learning pedagogies repeatedly demonstrates favorable and enhanced student outcomes in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. Despite calls for the adoption of these strategies by educational and governmental bodies, lecture-based practices remain prominent. Many factors (i.e., barriers and motivators) for the adoption of active learning have been reported in the literature. However, these findings are largely from qualitative studies containing small sample sizes and thus lack the statistical power to quantitatively understand the association of these factors, when collectively considered, with the uptake of active learning. The Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform model provides a framework to situate these factors related to active learning; malleable factors (i.e., factors that can be changed or altered) are grouped into three categories: contextual factors (i.e., physical and temporal contexts of teaching), personal factors (i.e., extent of instructors' preparation and teaching-related professional development), and teacher thinking factors (i.e., instructors' beliefs about teaching and learning). We leverage large-scale survey data from introductory chemistry, mathematics, and physics instructors along with multilevel modeling techniques to gain insight into the association of seventeen malleable factors with percent time lecturing and stage of research-based instructional strategy (RBIS) adoption based on the CACAO model of change (e.g., awareness, tryout, and adoption). Regression analyses indicate that several contextual, personal, and teacher thinking factors are associated with these outcomes (i.e., percent time lecturing and stage of RBIS adoption). Based on these findings, we provide recommendations on how change agents can tailor and personalize professional development opportunities for STEM instructors and how institutional leaders can incentivize the uptake of active learning in undergraduate STEM courses.

This presentation will explain an innovative Calculus course that has integrated algebra and precalculus for underprepared students, and it has used standards-based grading to change the way mathematics instruction is handled for STEM majors who are unprepared for Calculus at a small, private school in the midwest. In this course, calculus topics were taught alongside prerequisite skills, and students were required to demonstrate mastery of a core set of standards in order to complete the course. Topics could be re-tested many times, but partial credit was not given. The presentation will give results on how students have done as compared with peers who took the standard pre-requisite sequence, including an analysis of under-represented students' results and students' impressions about the course and the grading requirements. Additionally, results of a survey measuring students' self-efficacy and confidence as compared with their peers will be shared. Alongside this course, a faculty learning community at the university delved into literature on alternative grading methods and began to incorporate them into a variety of courses across the university. There will be 10 minutes for the presentation, with a 5-minute question and answer session.

This research examines how undergraduate faculty and graduate teaching assistants implemented traditional and remote, asynchronous pedagogical practices in the physics laboratory, as well as potential influences on students' cognitive and affective domains. While laboratory practices have traditionally been conducted in-person, online asynchronous laboratory learning has been growing in popularity due to increased enrollments and the recent pandemic, creating opportunities for expanded accessibility. In remote asynchronous learning environments, students have more autonomy to choose how they engage socially with their instructors and peers. Communities of practice, self-efficacy, and physics identity may provide insights into why students are making their participation choices and how they are interacting with peers and instructors in asynchronous physics laboratory courses.

Findings from the present research suggest that the degree of student-student interaction, as well as student-teacher interaction, are significantly correlated to students' self efficacy in the physics laboratory, however, the direction of causation is not clear. Through qualitative interviews with over 80 students, we will discuss their perceptions of social interaction in learning physics, the nature of physics epistemology, and how their physics identity and self-efficacy may influence their choice of laboratory course type and the degree of interaction with peers and instructors. We will also examine how instructors intentionally structure social opportunities for students to engage with them and their peers.

Half a million undergraduate students in the U.S. enroll in introductory physics courses each year, most of whom are non-physics majors taking the course as a requirement for their majors. Most of these students conduct laboratory work as a part of their curriculum. The exploration of online physics laboratory experiences informs future efforts to expand physics accessibility and improve students' attitudes and performance.