Interdisciplinary (99) A longitudinal study is being conducted to determine if students enrolled in BRAID courses (interwoven science and non-science courses) during their freshman year will show improved scientific experimental design skills and improved content knowledge that persists into subsequent upper level courses. Students in a residential learning community devoted to studying the natural sciences and their impact on society are being given the opportunity to enroll in BRAID courses that explicitly tie lecture and laboratory portions of biology and chemistry with each other and to mathematics and history, philosophy and sociology of science.
The students are living in a building that houses science facilities including both classrooms and laboratories, faculty offices and both administrative and academic support offices. Students in the entire freshmen cohort of approximately 625 chose to participate in all, none or some of the BRAID courses. Thus, three cohorts are created; one that will serve as a control group and two that give rise to a "dosage" variable.
Prior longitudinal research on the influence of reformed teaching practices on later performance in traditional courses is limited. Previous findings suggest that students participating in a reformed introductory course experience increasing learning gains as they continue throughout their undergraduate studies as compared to peers enrolled in the corresponding traditional introductory course.
The project, being conducted by an experienced multidisciplinary team, has the potential to make a major contribution to the understanding of how undergraduates learn and to pave the way for the development of integrated curricula. The study has particular relevance during this time of increasing adoption by colleges of the living-learning community model.
