Mike Ferrara
$199,952
Yunfei Hou
Miranda M McIntyre
Pamela Medina
University Enterprises Corporation at CSUSB
California
Education and Human Resources (EHR)
With support from the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI Program), this Track 1 pilot project aims to study online education across several disciplines at California State University, San Bernardino. Online education provides flexibility and access for students that may otherwise struggle to engage in a traditional in-person college experience. At the same time, understanding and strengthening online STEM education can be a challenge due to the variety of needs and practices across disciplines. The need to understand effective online education was magnified during the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated rapid, whole-institution moves to online courses. This project will explore online teaching and learning in four disciplines: biology, computer science and engineering, psychology, and information decision sciences, and will investigate and compare practices that specifically show potential to positively impact students in an HSI setting. An overarching goal of the project is to focus on how best to serve a broad and diverse population of online learners. Four areas of online teaching practice will be investigated: lecture attributes, student practice strategies, online labs, and testing practices. In addition, the project will look at key, overlapping issues for students from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM, low-income individuals, first-generation college students, and other groups. A key aim of the project is to understand how issues such as reduced online access, living conditions, and preference for structure and sense of community might impact student outcomes in online courses. Project research will use surveys, focus groups, and data from online classrooms to analyze practices in each of the four focal disciplines. Dissemination will focus on sharing both promising and potentially harmful educational practices (as cautions), as well as specific approaches that show promise to improve learning in each of the targeted disciplines or areas of online teaching practice. The HSI Program aims to enhance undergraduate STEM education, broaden participation in STEM, and build capacity at HSIs. Achieving these aims, given the diverse nature and context of the HSIs, requires innovative approaches that incentivize institutional and community transformation and promote fundamental research (i) on engaged student learning, (ii) about what it takes to diversify and increase participation in STEM effectively, and (iii) that improves our understanding of how to build institutional capacity at HSIs are supported by this program. 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.