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Identifying indicators of student success in STEM at KCC

At our first meeting this fall on Sept 26, we continued to work on the goals developed last semester:

  • Identify and evaluate resources and initiatives at KCC that support student success in STEM
  • Identify opportunities for research projects assessing the effectiveness of these resources and initiatives
  • Produce a report summarizing our findings (and figure out to whom we can present it)

During the meeting we discussed a summary of the following report, which may be interesting to all undergraduate STEM educators:

2018 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report: “Indicators for Monitoring Undergraduate STEM Education.” Read online or download for free at:                https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24943/indicators-for-monitoring-undergraduate-stem-education

 

In addition, we distributed the following information about an online homework manager, which may be a helpful tool for STEM faculty.

Online Homework Manager or OHM is a technology platform designed to support auto-graded assessments for students which are aligned and integrated with peer-reviewed Open Educational Resource (OER) based textbooks in use by thousands of math instructors.  While OHM’s capabilities are similar to more traditional publisher platforms, such as MyMathLab, it use of OER content and open-source software results in dramatically lower cost ($25 per student).  A partial list of mathematics courses currently supported in OHM can be found on our public course catalog which include links to the full textbooks. You can get a brief overview of OHM using this short demonstration video or reading about it.

OHM is now in wide scale use at both LaGuardia Community College and Hunter College in the CUNY system as both institutions have moved all of their introductory math courses over to OER using it.  Through this work both institutions will save CUNY students over $1 million this year in textbook costs.

Continued: Plans to address challenges to student success in STEM at KCC

Topic:

Continued discussion of plans for a study of challenges to and strategies for student success in STEM at KCC

 

Goal: (from previous meeting)

Identify obstacles and challenges to student success in STEM at KCC, and determine to what extent evidence-based strategies are employed at KCC to address these challenges

 

Effects of Mindset on success:

  • Faculty mindset (fixed vs. growth):
    • Revise the language of the survey: use the word “ability” instead of “talent” or “intelligence”
    • Compare the results to average grades in each instructor’s class
  • Student mindset:
    • Compare results to STEM grades and overall GPA
  • Create our own version of the survey in-house

 

How to proceed

  • Recruit faculty from each STEM dept to act as liaison and participate in this effort
  • Contact chairs (Math, Bio, Physical Sciences) to explain our goal and ask for their support and ideas
  • Review the AMP to see what is already being done to identify challenges to STEM success
  • Connect with KCTL and KCeL to see what they may be doing along these lines

 

More potential challenges students may face:

  • Connection to the community, belonging and identifying with STEM communities
  • Disconnect between faculty and student expectations
  • Advisement relationships
  • Gender/racial achievement gaps

Plan to study the challenges to and strategies for studnet success in STEM at KCC

At our April meeting, we discussed and formed a plan to identify obstacles and challenges to student success in STEM at KCC, and to determine to what extent evidence-based strategies are employed at KCC to address these challenges.

After having read so many studies identifying such challenges and the varying success of a range of strategies, we decided at our March meeting that we wanted to defient hese factors specifically at KCC, with the eventual goal of further improving students success in STEM at Kingsborough. We felt it was time to move beyond simple discussion of challenges and strategies to more concrete, coordinated, data-informed action. This plan marks the start of that process. The link below is an outline of our plan, to which we added during our discussion on April 30. An updated plan will be posted after our next meeting on May 21.

Summary April 2019

Racial achievement and motivation gaps related to faculty mindset

We discussed an article summarizing a study on the impact of faculty mindset on student achievement, with special attention to racial achievement gaps (link to article below). In this recent study, 150 STEM faculty across 13 departments at a large public university were surveyed (using a validated tool) to identify their beliefs regarding the fixedness of academic or intellectual ability. Course grades for 15,000 students who took courses with these instructors over seven terms were analyzed using a regression model to determine the presence and size of any effect of instructor mindset on student achievement. Students were separated into two categories, white/Asian and URM (underrepresented minorities including black, Hispanic, and native American). Faculty mindset predicted student achievement more than any other faculty characteristic (faculty race, age, experience, gender, tenure status), and was more pronounced for URM than for white/Asian students. The two figures included in this handout (Summary March 2019) are copied from the article and summarize these results, as well as the results of student evaluations for each course.

Mindset and Achievement Gapsl

The Timing of Math Requirements in Community College Education

At our third meeting on November 28, 2018, we discussed the optimal timing of the math requirement for community college students to maximize their success. We read research on this from the article posted below, which concluded, interestingly, that completing the math requirement in either the first semester or in the fourth or fifth semester (for students followed over six semesters) maximized their chances of graduating within that three-year period. We spent the whole hour interpreting these results and debating possible explanations of the data, and concluded that the results might depend strongly on the previous preparation of the students. Well prepared freshmen might do better to take the math requirement immediately (and feel ready to register for it immediately); whereas less prepared students might experience more success by delaying the math requirement until they have completed a year of college and have experience in managing the academic expectations. The decrease in success for those taking math their last (sixth) semester might indicate students who remain underprepared to complete college-level math.

Wang et al Math Requirement: When to fulfill

The Impact of Prerequisites on Student Learning

At our second meeting on 10/17/18, we discussed the impact of prerequisite courses on student success in subsequent courses. I’ve attached below the article we read and discussed, which summarizes research on this topic for STEM courses. It was a lively discussion! We concluded that while prior knowledge definitely increases student learning, prerequisites are not the only way to achieve that. While prerequisites may be recommended in specific circumstances, their requirement may not always be mandatory for success and must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis for each curriculum and student population.

PLOS_Sato_Prereqs

Concept Inventories: Use and Impact

At our first meeting on September 26, we discussed the use and efficacy of concept inventories in STEM. I have included a link to the handout from this meeting, including links to two articles on this topic. The attachment also includes several links to concept inventories in different disciplines. Thanks to Loretta Taras for pulling together these resources.

Concept inventories