The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) is establishing a multi-campus team of STEM faculty and academic administrators focused on incorporating culturally- and community-relevant problem-based learning (PBL) into the STEM programs of at least six Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs). The multi-campus project team is building on the transformative work of Navajo Technical College, a TCU that has been highly successful in increasing the number of American Indian students completing STEM degrees, in large part by promoting and encouraging PBL activities campus-wide.
Participating TCU faculty are incorporating PBL in at least one STEM course or program and exploring strategies for developing campus-wide PBL opportunities. The collaborating partners are working with AIHEC and expert consultants in PBL to develop and implement a culturally responsive PBL implementation and assessment strategy, building on the Indigenous Evaluation Framework developed by AIHEC for the evaluation of American Indian education programs.
The project is building upon a collaborative multi-campus best practices dissemination model developed by AIHEC through a Walmart Foundation-funded project that identified and disseminated empirically-based methodologies for increasing the retention and graduation rates of students at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). This model is being used to disseminate evidence-based best practices in problem-based learning at the undergraduate level. The best practices are based in large part on a TCU-specific and culturally responsive adaptation of the PBL instructional model developed and implemented successfully by Navajo Technical College.
The project is expanding the existing TCU community of practice focused on American Indian student retention and completion, helping to sustain an ongoing effort by AIHEC and the TCUs to identify and share best practices in promoting student success at TCUs. By significantly expanding the community of practitioners working with culturally-responsive implementations of problem-based learning and other student-centered learning models, the project is contributing to the knowledge base of culturally responsive implementations of PBL appropriate for American Indian and Native Alaskan STEM education programs.
The project is sharing project outcomes and its dissemination model with the larger MSI community through AIHEC's close partnerships with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), the National Association for Equal opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), and the Asian Pacific Islander American Association of Colleges and Universities (APIAACU).
