This project is examining connections between the affective domain and the cognitive domain for thousands of students in introductory geoscience courses at 8-10 colleges and universities across the United States. These institutions include large research universities, comprehensive universities, small liberal arts colleges and two-year community colleges. GARNET - the Geoscience Affective Research NETwork - is promoting excellence in STEM teaching and learning by examining how students' learning is influenced by their "affective characteristics" (motivation, attitudes, values, beliefs, etc.) and by pedagogical strategies designed to help support student learning and interest in the content. GARNET is helping to fill a little studied, yet highly significant gap in our understanding of student learning of science, by asking "how do students' motivations and beliefs about their learning skills influence their understanding of course content?" This project is integrating research and education by providing fundamental data about the role of the affective domain in learning, while simultaneously helping students develop better learning skills. The project is building on the results of a previous collaborative GARNET project that tested two key hypotheses: (1) the affective domain has a major influence on student learning; and (2) different teaching methods significantly influence student affect and, consequently, learning. Results of that previous project revealed that learning beliefs, such as self-efficacy, were related to student performance but that the use of different instructional strategies had minimal impact on students' affective constructs. This project is moving the original GARNET focus away from what instructors do to improve learning, to study "what students do" to modify their own affect and improve their abilities to learn. The affective domain is linked to a four-stage self-regulated learning cycle that instructors are using to train students to monitor and regulate their affective constructs, and are measuring and evaluating the associated impact on student learning. On the basis of such findings, the project is developing affect-based pedagogical resources and strategies that will allow instructors to develop better introductory geoscience classes and improve student engagement, attitude, and ultimately, learning across a variety of STEM fields.
Lead PI David McConnell (North Carolina State University) will submit a progress report that summarizes the major activities of the entire collaborative project. This report focuses mostly on activities and accomplishments at the University of North Dakota and also summarizes the overall findings from our study. At UND, we began collecting data in the fall 2008. Since then, we have collected data for 707 students in 19 different classes. Four instructors have been involved. The research has been supported by two consecutive NSF grants. For each class we studied, we collected the following data: 1. student demographic data 2. measurements of student motivation before and after they took the class. 3. measurements of student knowledge before and after they took the class 4. student grades for the class 5. student overall GPA 6. students SAT or ACT scores Student demographic data included many things such as gender and age, how many high school science classes the student had taken, a student’s interest in pursuing a career in geology . . . in short we sought to get a snapshot of student motivation and attitudes prior to taking introductory geology. We used the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire to measure student motivation. It is an 80 item survey developed over a number of years by Pintrich and coworkers at the University of Michigan. The MSLQ is divided into six subcategories containing 15 separate subscales addressing many different affective and metacognitive dimensions (Pintrich and others, 1991; Duncan and McKeachie, 2005). These subscales include a variety of affective dimensions, including value (task value), interest (intrinsic goal orientation), and attitude (self-efficacy, control of learning beliefs). We developed an introductory geology concept inventory to measure student knowledge prior to taking our classes and after taking our classes. This allowed us to measure student learning and to compare learning outcomes for different students, instructors and classes. We also collected student grades for each student but only used grades for ranking students, not as measurements of learning. To make comparisons between students’ academic strengths, we collected their SAT/ ACT scores and their GPA. Some of the conclusions of our study are what we expected. We found, for instance, that: ? older students maintain enthusiasm and generally do better in our classes than younger students ? students with high ACT/SAT scores or high GPAs do better in our classes ? female students may start out behind mails but often catch up by the end of a class ? STEM majors, and others who express interest in science do better in our classes than non STEM majors ? Those taking our classes for general education reasons tend to lose enthusiasm and to receive low grades Some surprising results were that: ? the best students in our classes tend to maintain motivation throughout the semester; the poorer students tend to lose motivation ? but, on average, students in all classes taught by all instructors lose motivation by the end of a semester ? these trends are the same at R1 universities, small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or state 4-year schools ? the trends are the same for instructors, no matter how they teach – that is, students lose motivation in their classes ? but, those instructors that are most student oriented do less damage than those who teach traditional instructor oriented classes ? motivation is a key factor and a predictor of success ? there are many things that instructors can do to improve and maintain student motivation
