This is a collaborative project involving 3 proposals.
Number Institution PI 0618746, lead Franklin and Marshall College Moog 0618758 University of South Florida Lewis 0618800 Catholic University of America Bunce
This project supports the growth of the POGIL system of education through dissemination, implementation, improvement, evaluation and research across the country. POGIL is a nationally tested and proven pedagogical strategy that incorporates recent educational research on how students learn. It is an exemplary tested innovation that has already demonstrated the ability to promote widespread adoption.
During this project, increased use of POGIL is generated by the expansion of regional networks, supported by ongoing faculty development opportunities. The project coordinates and disseminates adaptations of POGIL materials for diverse settings and supports new POGIL developments in strategic areas.
The project develops faculty expertise in targeted areas of the country, establishing and supporting regional connections via workshops and planning sessions to produce self-sustaining regional networks of POGIL practitioners with a national hub.
Evaluation of student learning related to POGIL uses an in-depth methodology that builds on the project's successful history of comparative evaluation. To measure skills for lifelong learning, as well as more traditional content goals, new instruments are being developed that utilize new finely-tuned assessments of student learning.
Basic research on undergraduate STEM teaching and learning is the engine that drives curricular reform. POGIL has always been a research-based educational innovation. The project is contributing to this research base by describing how conceptual change occurs in students' understanding of chemistry in a POGIL setting, providing insight not only into the nature of conceptual change but also into critical features for effective implementation that feed the project's development and dissemination efforts.