This WIDER planning project is addressing the challenges of student learning, diversity, and retention in STEM by promoting evidenced-based pedagogies with proven organizational change frameworks. The project is being implemented by a team of faculty with a depth and breadth of accumulated expertise in transforming faculty educational practices. The team is working work with colleagues in ten STEM departments to develop a framework in which to pilot the use of four effective pedagogies, as a prelude to a larger implementation phase. The four pedagogies are: (1) Peer-instruction; (2) SCALE-UP; (3) Blended learning and flipped classrooms; and (4) Online customized tutoring in mathematics to accompany mathematics and statistics coursework. To achieve the transformation, the project will focus on core faculty beliefs about student learning as a means for identifying opportunities for transformation. The project will also rely both on proven transformative processes at GW, such as faculty learning communities, as well as organizational change approaches recommended in the education community, such as the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM). The project will forge the collaborations among faculty needed to adopt future developments in STEM pedagogy, and to form an agent of transformative change on campus.
This project will also seek to understand the core issues in recruiting and retaining students from non-dominant and underrepresented groups, as well as impact student learning in non-major STEM courses through the use of evidence-based pedagogies. The change processes and materials developed in this project can serve as a model at other universities.
