This project is leveraging eight years experience of developing and implementing the concepts and practices of Just-in-Time-Teaching with Interactive Frequent Formative Feedback (JTF) pedagogy. The project is scaling JTF from a single engineering discipline with eight faculty participating to seven engineering disciplines with 84 faculty being involved through a professional development program. JTF pedagogy integrates the evidence-based practices of student engagement, contextualization of content, and web-enabled two-way formative feedback into a pedagogy that has been shown to improve student attitudes, achievement and persistence. The project will engage participating faculty in year-long apprenticeships with a semester of biweekly workshops followed by a semester of mentor supported classroom implementation of evidence-based teaching. Research shows that changing faculty teaching beliefs toward evidence-based strategies and practices can be difficult but working within a cohort eases the transition. In response to this research , disciplinary communities of practice will be formed to support faculty while they are changing their beliefs and practices. The personal interactions that occur within and between the disciplinary communities of practice will be characterized with social network analysis and will be correlated to changes, across time, in the beliefs of the faculty apprentices (e.g., the shift in faculty beliefs from teacher-centered, transmission-of-information instruction to student-centered, conceptual-change instruction) The important knowledge that will be generated and contributed to the growing body of knowledge concerning faculty change will be an understanding of the critical role and impact of disciplinary communities of practice such as faculty interactions within and between them and the extent to which they support faculty change.

The project will assess faculty at the beginning, middle, and end of each year-long apprenticeship by triangulating the baseline and change in faculty beliefs and classroom practice with surveys, interviews and classroom observations. The impact on students' persistence and achievement will be determined from a participating faculty member's class before and after the apprenticeship. The assessments will be used to: 1) characterize the shifts in faculty beliefs, strategies, and practice toward student-centered learning; 2) assess faculty fidelity of classroom implementation of this new pedagogy in comparison with their faculty beliefs; 3) develop sustainable disciplinary communities of practice and assess their impact on faculty change; 4) characterize disciplinary differences in barriers to use of JTFD in classroom implementation of evidence based practices; and 5) assess, for faculty classroom use of JTFD, the disciplinary differences of change in attitude, achievement, and persistence of students, especially for underrepresented populations.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
1524527
Program Officer
Alexandra Medina-Borja
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2015-09-01
Budget End
2020-08-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2015
Total Cost
$1,499,738
Indirect Cost
Name
Arizona State University
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Tempe
State
AZ
Country
United States
Zip Code
85281