The goal of this WIDER planning grant program is to enhance the educational experience of STEM majors at Georgia State University (GSU) by encouraging the faculty to make evidence-based changes in their pedagogy. GSU is notable as a highly diverse campus, with strengths in the STEM disciplines. Four strategies are being employed in this project. First, the current pedagogical knowledge, educational goals, and career motivations of GSU instructors (both tenure track and non-tenure track) are being assessed in order to help the University support the faculty in their efforts to implement pedagogical change. Second, the data "dashboard" needs of instructional faculty are being assessed, in order to create readily accessible quantitative data sets that allow rapid assessment of changes in teaching practices. Third, forums for sharing ideas, expertise and pedagogical help with GSU faculty members via outside mentors are being established. Finally, four Faculty Learning Communities centered on peer-led team learning, the hybrid classroom, training and support of graduate teaching assistants, and integration of science concepts into the mathematics curriculum are being created, to provide sustained engagement and feedback for the reform efforts underway. In all four of these areas, the goal is to nucleate change starting from interdisciplinary groups of faculty with similar pedagogical goals.
The broad goal of this program is to significantly increase GSU's institutional commitment to evidence-based teaching and learning in the STEM disciplines. Increased student engagement should in turn increase both retention and progression toward the degree. Full-time non-tenure track faculty have a significant role in STEM education at GSU and increasingly in the nation as a whole. A detailed study of the pedagogical knowledge, educational goals, and career motivations of these key instructional players is therefore important to all institutions that use a specialized faculty model. A model of a "dashboard" of readily accessible quantitative data of student performance will be of broad interest as the United States seeks to encourage evidence-based pedagogical innovations throughout the STEM disciplines.
