Biological Science (61) This comprehensive project builds on the results and products from FIRST II, Faculty Institutes for Reforming Science Teaching through Field Stations. It is designing the instrument that can serve as the repository for existing data from this project and for data that will be generated by it and other funded projects. By establishing a repository for assessment data from undergraduate science courses the project develops faculty, postdoctoral and graduate students' capacity to implement scientific teaching and contribute to the scholarship of scientific teaching.
Intellectual Merit: The assessment repository being developed documents outcomes of faculty professional development including assessment of student outcomes. Faculty from all fields of biology can input and retrieve data from the repository to explore questions about effective teaching and learning in undergraduate biology education. This project facilitates the difficult process of conducting cross-site studies using assessment data from large numbers of students and classes. The repository is the bridge between teaching and research that enables faculty to become both expert users of and contributors to the scholarship of scientific teaching. Existence of a common repository for evaluation and assessment data, one usable by a variety of faculty, facilitates the efforts of faculty engaged in reforms in undergraduate science education to have their efforts recognized, evaluated, and rewarded nationally and within their institutions.
Broader Impact: Use of the repository promises to lead to increased appreciation for the importance of assessment of student learning in response to changes in instruction and can help in development of tested mechanisms for exploring undergraduate learning in the sciences. As scientists use the repository to document and explore student achievement in science, scholarly work about teaching and student learning should increase in quality, quantity and rigor. Studies of efforts in faculty professional development will also benefit from an enhanced ability to include scholarly work about student learning in specific STEM disciplines. Coordination with the BioSciEd Net (BEN) site of the National STEP Digital Library (NSDA) and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) ensures broad dissemination.
