Rethinking STEM Teaching and Learning
What happens when we ask college students which teaching strategies actually help them learn and feel like they belong in STEM? What would they say they experienced the most?
A new study from SMATE's STEM Educational Research team takes a closer look. Dr. Dustin Van Orman, Dr. Daniel Hanley, Dr. Josie Melton, and graduated student Abbey Gray studied 21 STEM courses across three higher education institutions as part of the NSF-funded BETTER in STEM project.
At the beginning of this project, the researchers found that lectures were still the most commonly used teaching modality, but students reported that lectures benefited their learning and sense of belonging to courses and fields of study the least. Students pointed instead to active learning, opportunities to practice and revise, have meaningful feedback dialogues, engage in small-group work, and build supportive relationships with instructors as strategies that helped them learn and feel connected.
The study also found differences between how instructors and students viewed the use of evidence-based teaching practices, as well as differences in how students from different backgrounds experienced their STEM courses.
This is the first of many upcoming peer-reviewed studies from the Building Educational Theory through Enacting Reforms (BETTER) in STEM project, which brings together faculty and institutions to explore what equitable, student-centered STEM teaching can look like in practice, and how to better enact it for the benefit of students.