Webinars

Propagation is a goal that most developers of educational innovations strive for. However, it is also a goal that eludes many, in part because development teams fail to consider and plan for many factors that affect propagation. This webinar will emphasize iterative evaluation and development of a propagation plan using what has been learned from study of the literature and evaluation of propagation plans from proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation. For more information on our project and supporting resources, see the Increase the Impact website.

The Partnership for Undergraduate Life Sciences Education (PULSE) is an organization dedicated to working with STEM departments to ensure they align their curricula and other activities with research-based practices. A subgroup, the Northwest PULSE Fellows, obtained NSF RCN-UBE funding to design and facilitate workshops for life sciences faculty from a diverse group of colleges and universities in the Pacific Northwest. Over 5 years, approximately 65 (of 140) institutions sent teams of 3-6 faculty and administrators to a workshop intended to empower them as change agents.During the 3-day workshop, each school developed a five-year action plan to revise their curriculum and transform their department in order to better educate all of their students. We framed the workshop around the tenets of systems thinking and provided participants training on the skills they would need to engage their entire department, including colleagues not present at the workshop, so that they might achieve department-wide goals. Prior to the workshops, each individual completed portions of the PULSE rubrics or the Snapshot rubric. Initial conversations within the team helped them to come to consensus on their current status. Conversations about the rubrics also helped them determine areas where their departments had room for improvement. Participants learned how to engage a group in a visioning exercise, and how to translate the results of that exercise into a specific action plan. In addition, because departments are themselves complex systems embedded in even more complex systems in higher education, we focused on providing skills for thinking about systems holistically, rather than tackling issues one at a time, which can cause unanticipated consequences. Participants were encouraged to identify champions and envision solutions with the most leverage within their system, that would enable significant buy-in and change.

We will describe the structure of the workshops, give a brief overview of the systems thinking tools we utilized, and present assessment results that demonstrate that teams who employed systems thinking skills were more likely to have enacted meaningful curricular and pedagogical change.

The Roundtable on Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Education is a group of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that brings together national experts and thought leaders representing the full spectrum of stakeholders in higher education. In September 2019 they held a working meeting on Recognizing and Evaluating Science Teaching in Higher Education in cooperation with ASCN, AAU, and TEval. This working meeting brought together people working to improve teaching evaluation to discuss their experiences and to use the resulting information to coordinate and catalyze further actions that will leverage teaching evaluation to advance the common goal of improving undergraduate STEM learning experiences. This webinar will highlight some of the examples presented at the working meeting, themes noted by participants, and opportunities for further work that will bring these ideas to a wider audience that includes campus leaders. The webinar will provide an opportunity for participants to share ideas on what kinds of resources and events would be helpful to elevating and advancing the discussion of teaching evaluation, in particular how it relates to evidence-based instruction and faculty incentives and rewards.

Highly effective department chairs balance their roles as colleague and leader to develop and sustain a clear vision of the change necessary to meet departmental and institutional challenges and achieve programmatic goals. Building on the fundamental lessons learned by the physics community in the work leading to the landmark Strategic Programs for Innovations in Undergraduate Physics (SPIN-UP) and Preparing Physics Students for 21st Century Careers (Phys21) reports, and culminating in the soon-to-be-released Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) Guide, this webinar discusses the "7 Habits of Highly Effective STEM Department Chairs" developed in the bi-annual Physics Department Chairs Workshop and the Physics and Astronomy New Faculty Workshop series run jointly by the American Association for Physics Teachers (AAPT) and the American Physical Society (APS).

Student interest is migrating towards the large-scale "wicked" problems in our world, such as climate change, income inequality, sustainability, and human trafficking. These wicked problems rarely rely on a single discipline for their solution, however our educational system is locked into the single discipline approach. At James Madison University, we have explored a variety of programs that build transdisciplinary opportunities for our students.

Transdisciplinary teaching and learning are hot topics, but how can you get started and sustain transdisciplinary activities on your campus? Over the past five years, we have created an array of transdisciplinary courses, designed intentionally to help students and faculty experience a world where they can bring their disciplinary knowledge to bear on wicked challenges. Students describe these experiences as the most challenging courses they've taken. By combining concrete examples of innovation capacity, professional curiosity, and exceptional communication skills, these students tend to be hired earlier in the season and earn more than their peers by discipline. Further, they remain engaged upon graduation and actively seek opportunities to build connections between their employers and the institution.

The Roundtable on Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Education is a group of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that brings together national experts and thought leaders representing the full spectrum of stakeholders in higher education. They coordinate and catalyze actions that advance the common goal of improving undergraduate STEM learning experiences. Linking existing reform efforts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education allows reformers to learn from each other and leverage each other's work. Using evidence-based approaches and building on successful reform efforts, the roundtable works to expand access, increase equity, and support quality learning experiences for all learners. Their work examines changes in technology, workforce, demographics, and society to determine optimal ways for the system of higher education to respond to the current and future needs of the nation to have a scientifically literate public and a well-prepared STEM workforce. This webinar will highlight forces the Roundtable sees impacting the future of undergraduate STEM education, present information on some of the key themes the Roundtable has identified as central to progress in improving undergraduate STEM education, and invite input from webinar participants on their own related initiatives and their suggestions for future Roundtable work.

Reform efforts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education increasingly rely on collaboration from diverse stakeholders to achieve collective change goals. The basic premise is that initiatives can achieve more collectively than through individual siloed reform efforts. Yet, despite recent efforts to frame and even model productive collaboration (e.g., Collective Impact and networked improvement communities), our understanding of how to build collaborative STEM reform initiatives among diverse partners is still rather nascent (though certainly growing). In this webinar, the author will present the Dimensions of Collaborative Dynamics Framework, which identifies the key elements, related to motivation, group norms and processes, support resources, and leadership, that collaborative STEM reform initiatives need to pay attention to in advancing their collective change goals. The framework is the result of a synthesis of three decades of multidisciplinary research and literature regarding complex multi-institutional and multi-sector collaboration and partnerships.

Evidence that active, student-centered learning in STEM classrooms contributes to desired student outcomes has now accumulated to compelling levels. However, promoting and supporting widespread use of new practices is challenging, even amongst practitioners open to such changes. One contributing factor is the fact that a majority of instructional change efforts focus on only a small portion of the instructional system, while true transformation requires systemic reform. Successful institutional change initiatives have been shown to involve common features: they involve ongoing interventions, align with individuals' beliefs, and work within the existing landscape of institutional values. In this webinar, participants will be introduced to a new theory to support instructional change in undergraduate mathematics that incorporates a new dimension – instructor peer observation – in an existing model for institutional change (the CACAO model), thereby aligning with evidence regarding what supports effective change. An exemplar will be given to illustrate how this theory might be realized in practice.

The National Science Foundation's Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program currently funds 19 projects that are designing revolutionary new approaches to engineering and computer science education, ranging from changing the canon of engineering to fundamentally altering the way courses are structured to creating new departmental structures and educational collaborations with industry. A common thread across these projects is a focus on organizational and cultural change within the departments, involving students, faculty, staff, and industry in rethinking what it means to provide an engineering program. Beginning with the FY19 solicitation, too catalyze revolutionary approaches, while expanding the reach of those that have proved efficacious in particular contexts, the RED program will support two tracks: RED Innovation and RED Adaptation and Implementation (RED-A&I). RED Innovation projects will develop new, revolutionary approaches and change strategies that enable the transformation of undergraduate engineering education. RED Adaptation and Implementation projects will adapt and implement evidence-based organizational change strategies and actions to the local context, which helps propagate this transformation of undergraduate engineering education. Projects in both tracks will include consideration of the cultural, organizational, structural, and pedagogical changes needed to transform the department to one in which students are engaged, develop their technical and professional skills, and establish identities as professional engineers. The focus of projects in both tracks is on the department's disciplinary courses and program. During this webinar, program director Dr. Julie Martin will introduce the RED program and its projects and reflect on the impact RED is having on engineering and computer science education.

Join authors Stephanie Chasteen and Warren Code as they discuss the messages from their new (free, open-source) Science Education Initiative Handbook on how to effectively use discipline-based education specialists to facilitate change within departments. We will discuss who makes a good educational expert, what their role can be within a department, how to train and support them, and engaging faculty and departments in change.

Many efforts to improve teaching in higher education focus on a few faculty members at an institution at a time, with limited published evidence on attempts to engage faculty across entire departments. In this webinar, we give an example of a program which achieved the widespread faculty engagement that is often lacking. We created a long-term, department-wide collaborative professional development program, Biology Faculty Explorations in Scientific Teaching (Biology FEST). Over three years of Biology FEST, 89% of the department's faculty completed a weeklong Scientific Teaching Institute, and 83% of eligible instructors participated in additional semester-long follow-up programs. We will share a variety of evidence showing that a majority of Biology FEST alumni adding active learning to their courses (including self-report, survey, and decibal analysis), that this engagement was sustained, as was a sense of belonging in the department. We will share insights from our change story for other campuses wanting to spark widespread change in teaching practices – including ways to move away from a "deficit" model of faculty learning, towards positive support of instructor professional identity.

Colleges and universities are increasingly under pressure to reach improved student success outcomes (e.g., improve student learning, increase retention and graduation rates, close equity gaps, shorten time to graduation) more quickly and at lower cost to the state and to their students. Programs in STEM education are frequently at the center of these efforts for a variety of reasons (workforce development, challenging gateway courses, direct connection to problem-solving, complexity of advanced skill development, tech-driven society, etc.). Responding to this pressure to achieve improved outcomes requires new ways of working together, knowledge sharing and collaboration. Solutions at the individual departmental level are no longer adequate; cross departmental and divisional collaborations will be necessary. Strategic and evidence-based approaches are also required to maximize impact and ensure success. While project leaders may have ideas of their own, they must learn to embrace concepts of shared leadership. In other words, they must move from "me" (my ideas) to "we" (our ideas). Leaders of all types must learn how to cultivate teams of people who share an interest in the issue, can use evidence to identify the problem, explore creative solutions, take risks (and possibly fail!) together, and develop new patterns of engagement and complementary experiences to develop a collective agenda for action. This approach builds ownership among the faculty and staff who are instrumental in implementing and sustaining the desired changes over time. It also enhances engagement of administrators who are also central to providing resources and support for the desired changes. Participants in this session will learn more about the benefits of shared leadership and how to develop the conditions required to build the capacity for shared leadership and success.

Emerging STEM educators -- including graduate students close to completion of their doctoral work, and assistant professors who are just entering their fields -- are often asked to design and implement academic change in the form of new curricula, programs, and pedagogies. Research suggests that their graduate education does not prepare them well to fully comprehend the academic environments and resulting cultures, value systems and constraints. As a result they might not feel empowered or capable of implementing academic change. Furthermore, successful change agents must possess skills (like strategic thinking, obtaining buy-in, and creating partnerships) that are not a part of conventional faculty experiences. Preparation to be a change leader starts with the adoption of successful research-based change strategies, and this adoption can help encourage development of future academic change leaders. Only by developing nascent change leaders can we hope to sustain the growing community of practice in academic change in engineering education.

This webinar will focus on helping individuals begin their development as change leaders. The emphasis will be on practical, hands-on tools that are based in the research literature on change. The presenters are change leaders at different stages of their own development, so there will be multiple perspectives on the theme of change leadership. As part of the webinar, we will be promoting the Emerging Engineering Educators (E3) Making Academic Change Happen Workshop (MACH) that is being funded by NSF and will be occur on January 19 and 20 on the campus of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. E3 MACH will provide nascent change leaders with the opportunity to develop their change leadership skills in a supportive, dynamic environment with facilitation provided by members of the experience MACH leadership team.

Change has been targeted at the course and curriculum levels, focusing on teaching and learning methods and proving their efficacy. These beneficial activities have not, however, fostered the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) in motivation, communication, collaboration, and persuasion that are the foundation for change on larger, more institutional levels. These change strategies are well documented in the literature of other disciplines, such as organizational psychology and behavior, but have not been brought into the conversation within STEM education in a rigorous, accessible way. This presentation poses a central question: Can we overcome limits that prevent the diffusion of new ideas, can we overcome barriers to the adoption of effective practices, by focusing on the change agents themselves in terms of their skills and change expertise? The focus of this webinar is on the change maker's toolkit, the set of KSAs that can help change agents meet and conquer their change project challenges.

This webinar discusses the findings from a 3-year study of the California State University (CSU) STEM Collaboratives project, funded by the Helmsley Charitable Trust. The project selected 8 CSU campuses to rethink the ways in which they support first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented minority students in STEM as they transition to college and experience their first year. Each participating campus implemented three integrated high-impact practices (HIPs) through collaboration among faculty and student affairs. The three HIPs included a summer experience, a first-year seminar or first-year experience, and redesigned introductory STEM courses. The goal of these programs was to create a seamless, connected, and integrated experience for students, with curricular and co-curricular support as well as socioemotional support. This project is an example of a systemic approach to STEM student support, targeting both academic and student affairs and working across multiple levels of both individual organizations and university systems to effect change. The major takeaways from this project have important implications for practitioners who are interested in experimenting with this new way of organizing transitions to college for underrepresented students in STEM. Lessons learned that we will cover in the webinar include:

• Knowledge necessary to support underrepresented students in STEM
• Value of the project for students and broader campus communities
• Facilitators and challenges to collaboration and implementation

Successful STEM projects, especially those aiming to influence cultural and structural changes, involve working across organizational levels (e.g., disciplines, departments, colleges, institutions). Funders and administrative directives encourage collaborative efforts but typically focus more on reform mission of the collaborative rather than the functional developmental components. Experience clearly shows there is more to creating and sustaining effective educational partnerships. First, using a partnership development model, this session will help participants identify challenges to partnership development and strategies to address them. Then, lessons learned will be shared from experiences connecting with colleagues across campus and suggestions offered on how to utilize a wide-range of team expertise in campus partnerships/teams. Participants interactively will explore practical steps that can help overcome challenges working in interdisciplinary teams. Next, this session will offer a look at research findings and insights from two multi-institutional collaborations, the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), a network of 41 universities focused on preparing future faculty, and CIRTL's NSF INCLUDES launch pilot. Participants will learn what are the key activities and characteristics of individuals who can successfully span the boundary between their organization and a larger partnership collective in service to local and national reform goals.

With decades of growing evidence on effective teaching practices in STEM disciplines, much of it field-specific thanks to the Discipline Based Education Research (DBER) communities, information about what to do to improve STEM education is readily available. Yet, national adoption of evidence-based teaching practices in STEM fields lags behind, with abundant examples of short-lived individual efforts and institutional reforms that don't "stick." Something else is going on. One factor at play may be the deeper tensions between new approaches to teaching and faculty members' concepts about identity and the nature of their work in higher education. This webinar will explore key ideas from the literature on faculty work/life, identity, and adoption in an approachable way. Participants will interactively explore tools for identifying and resolving tensions, guiding faculty toward sustainable adoption of evidence-based teaching practices, and engaging or changing institutional structures to address these tensions.

This webinar focuses on the challenges of leading a transformational change effort that has the potential to address the underlying institutional and faculty assumptions and behaviors that affect student interest, progress and success in the study of STEM fields. Participants will explore several key questions that anyone undertaking and leading a significant change effort should consider as they design, launch and seek to expand an effort to improve interest and the outcomes of STEM education. Topics will address each phase of a typical cycle of change including reading the institutional environment and making the case for change, creating a theory of action to support the design of a change effort, selecting a suitable approach to an identified problem, identifying resources to support the effort, launching the effort, tracking the progress and impact of the change effort and reviewing the outcomes and drawing lessons from the experience that can lead to the creation of a supportive environment for further change efforts.