NSF grants to WMU to boost teaching of science

Kathy Jennings | Thursday, December 5, 2013

To enhance teaching and help keep students in classes where they learn science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the National Science Foundation has awarded $529,000 Western Michigan University's Science and Mathematics Program Improvement center.

WMU is part of a team of faculty from six universities--Michigan State University is the lead institution--across the country carrying out research intended to assist science, technology, engineering and mathematics faculty so they can better understand and respond to student thinking and misconceptions regarding major concepts covered in their undergraduate coursework.

"A huge percentage of students drop out of science majors after their first year," says Dr. Mary Anne Sydlik, Science and Mathematics Program Improvement director and head of WMU's evaluation team. "STEM undergrads struggle, for a number of reasons, which in turn can lead to low grades and the impulse to transfer into non-STEM majors."

The project has two main goals. One is to continue creating and validating questions for use in introductory biology, chemistry, chemical engineering and statistics courses and to develop a web portal to analyze students' written answers to homework, quizzes and test questions.

Part of the problem is that the multiple-choice tests used in large classes do not always reflect whether a student fully understands the underlying concepts represented in individual questions. Faculty using multiple-choice questions do not get the feedback on student thinking, particularly misconceptions, needed to support students' mastery of the subject.

The NSF-funded initiative is designed to allow faculty to use an automated system that analyzes students' written answers to questions and then provides a report documenting where the class as a whole needs more assistance with difficult topics or concepts.

The second goal is to form discipline-based learning communities for biology, chemistry, statistics and engineering faculty interested in new methods of assessment and using automated analysis to inform their teaching.

The research team will determine the extent to which participation in a faculty learning community brings about a sustained use of the new assessment tools and changes in the way participating faculty address student difficulties and misconceptions.

Writer: Kathy Jennings, Second Wave Media
Source: Mark Schwerin, Western Michigan University