This two-phased project is guiding efforts to encourage the use of research-based teaching strategies in college-level physics instruction. The project is studying the instructional change process in general, identifying barriers to change, and identifying change affordances. The goal of the first phase is to observe the change process as it happens. A five-semester longitudinal study of fifteen faculty who have participated in the NSF-supported Physics and Astronomy New Faculty Workshop and who have indicated a willingness to engage in instructional change is being conducted. This study allows the examination of changes in instructional beliefs and practices as they happen in actual course settings over an extended period of time. Data include faculty interviews conducted at the beginning and end of each semester, surveys of the faculty conducted every three weeks throughout the semester, and teaching artifacts. For the study's second phase, all faculty who have participated in the New Faculty Workshop for the past five years are being surveyed. This second faculty cohort provides the study with a range of participants - from those who have just experienced the workshop to those who have had significant time to incorporate and reflect on their workshop experiences and to seek additional information about instructional innovations. The second study focuses on testing ideas generated as a result of the longitudinal study and on generating more generalized results because of the larger sample size.
This was a two-phased research study. The first phase was a longitudinal study involving fifteen participants from the Nov 2010 New Faculty Workshop (NFW) who were interviewed at the beginning and end of each semester they taught an introductory course over a 5 semester period of time. The second phase of the research study was a web survey of all NFW past participants. The survey was administered in Spring 2013 to all 1306 NFW participants (from 1996-2012). Of these, 526 useable responses were received, for a response rate of 40%. Findings from phase 1 include: 1. The NFW significantly increased participant knowledge of research-based teaching methods for all participants. 2. The NFW increased participant attitudes towards using research-based teaching methods. All participants implemented changes in their teaching after the NFW. Peer Instruction and Just-In-Time-Teaching were the most widely adopted/adapted instructional strategies. 3. All participants report discussing NFW ideas with colleagues. 4. Implementation results were mixed. Many respondents reported feeling not feeling implementation was going well and many felt discouraged that students were responding unfavorably to innovation 5. All participants report continuing to modify their instruction to address difficulties. In some cases this meant a decrease in use of 'new' methods. 6. The main implementation challenges were identified to be: a. Students complained about innovation: Participants reported problems with student complaints about the use of the research-based methods. b. Students would not engage - Participants reported frequent problems getting the students to participate in activities associated with an innovation. c. Colleagues questions innovation use - Participants were in local environments where their use of research-based methods was called into question by their colleagues, often this was in response to low student evaluations and complaints. d. Local teaching environment traditional – Participants were alone in their use of research-based strategies which made it difficult for them to have support through implementation difficulties. e. Physical environment not supportive – Participants reported their physical environment made implementation use more challenging (i.e. poorly designed rooms for interactive engagement). f. Implementation did not go well – Participants reported a general feeling that their implementation was not going well which caused them to question its use. g. Lack of sufficient support resources – Participants reported shortcomings in the current resources available to them from the Physics Education Research community, i.e. available resources too time consuming or difficult to navigate, lack understanding of how to use and interpret assessment instruments, lack resources for their specific situation, not knowing about available resources, lack information about how to overcome common implementation difficulties, etc. 7. The main implementation affordances were found to be: a. Students responded favorably to the innovation - Participants reported students liked the use of the research-based strategy. b. Students engaged in innovation use - Participants reported seeing students more engaged in class and asking higher quality questions. c. General feeling that implementation was successful - Participations reported feeling students were learning more with the use of the research-based strategy. d. Innovation use valued by local colleagues – Participants reported their local colleagues valued their use of research-based strategies. e. Local colleagues were also using research-based strategies – Participants reported that others around them were also moving away from traditional instruction, providing a support network. f. Physical structures – Participants reported the availability of physical structures (i.e. rooms with whiteboards, availability of clickers, etc.) which helped their implementation efforts. g. Physics Education Research dissemination efforts: Participants reported products from the PER community (i.e. the New Faculty Workshop, availability of curricular materials, websites such as Campadre, assessment instruments, etc.) were very helpful in their efforts to improve their teaching. 8. Participants apply ideas from innovation use at the introductory level to upper level courses. 9. Participants frequently report influencing their colleagues toward more research-based strategy use. Findings from phase 2 include: 1. Past participants report low levels of the use of exclusive lecturing with female faculty reporting significantly higher levels of use of interactive engagement than male faculty. 2. Survey results confirm that faculty have generally favorable experiences with resources from the PER community but that improvements in dissemination efforts are still needed. Most notably, about half of respondents reported difficulty knowing how to interpret the results of research-based assessment instruments. 3. Respondents reporting lower levels of lecture use also reported higher levels of student complaints. 4. The majority (77%) of faculty who teach upper level courses report implementing ideas learned in the NFW for introductory level courses in their upper level courses. 5. The majority (52%) of faculty report they have impacted their colleagues teaching as a result of their attendance at the NFW through discussions with those colleagues.
