Collaborative Research: Establishing Networked Improvement Communities of STEM Educators Actively Engaging Students through Peer Mentoring

About This Grant

This Level 2 Institutional and Community Transformation project aims to serve the national interest by establishing networked improvement communities (NICs, scientific learning communities with a common aim) among STEM Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) and the faculty members who provide GTAs' teaching professional development (Providers). In undergraduate STEM education, research has shown methods that engage students, such as active learning, can be effective. However, using active learning strategies effectively requires guidance and structure. This project strives to generate a support structure that helps GTAs implement evidence-based teaching practices with a focus on active learning by having experienced GTAs provide peer-mentoring for their less experienced peers. To equip and support the peer mentors, the project intends to develop, test, and refine a peer-mentor curriculum, facilitated by Providers and tailored to each STEM discipline. This project aims to establish and sustain two critical communities: (1) a STEM GTA NIC using peer-mentoring and (2) a STEM Provider NIC that will facilitate discipline-specific peer-mentoring. The research team will endeavor to identify how the GTA NIC and the Provider NIC become established by capturing the longitudinal changes in GTA teaching professional development via the theory of change known as Improvement Science that looks for incremental cycles of growth. This project is important because it will focus on a key undergraduate STEM teaching workforce (GTAs) by establishing a network of Providers to serve as critical agents of change for undergraduate STEM education by directly impacting GTAs' teaching. This project is significant because it can support sustainable and transformative changes in teaching undergraduate STEM courses through multiple departments using the Provider NIC. This project plans to implement a peer-mentor program across multiple STEM disciplines (biology, chemistry, communication, mathematics, physics, psychology, and statistics) at the University of South Carolina (USC) and Bowling Green State University (BGSU) to grow GTAs' effective use of active learning strategies and improve GTA teaching professional development. The rationale for using peer-mentoring comes from nine years of prior research and funding of sustainable peer-mentor programs established within mathematics departments to improve the effective use of active learning. In this program, experienced GTAs are educated in a semester-long seminar about how to mentor novice GTAs. GTA Mentors (1) regularly observe novice GTAs and provide individual formative feedback, and (2) facilitate small GTA group discussions about teaching with active learning. This model, initially funded externally, has now been internally funded and enculturated at both universities’ mathematics departments. The overarching goal of the current project is to establish peer-mentoring within other STEM disciplines with support from two new multidisciplinary NICs, one for Providers and one for GTAs. To this end, the project's three goals are to: (1) construct a network of peer-mentoring GTA teaching professional development programs in STEM departments at two universities; (2) adapt a program for each Provider to implement peer mentoring in their STEM department; and (3) revise and evaluate the effectiveness of the peer-mentor program across universities and departments using Improvement Science's Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles. Through this process, changes can be tracked, researched, and justified with a manageable scope. The main research questions this project aims to explore are (1) How do individual Providers and GTAs develop and measure the effectiveness of instruction as a part of establishing the peer-mentor program? and (2) How have the NICs transformed GTA teaching professional development through peer-mentoring with active learning? The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.