Strengthening Teaching and Learning in the Geosciences: The Role of Education Research Cathy Manduca Science Education Resource Center, Carleton College Executive Director, National Association of Geoscience Teachers AAAS , Boston, MA February 17, 2017 c

Effective Teaching and Learning Research on Teaching and Learning Ideal World Effective Teaching and Learning Research on Teaching and Learning

Starting the Cycle 1997 2002 -Geologic time, complex systems, visualizing the earth Customized dissemination in a geoscience context

Effective Teaching and Learning Research on Teaching and Learning Ideal World Effective Teaching and Learning Research on Teaching and Learning More emphasis on moving existing research into education How was this done.

Ten Years of Transforming Undergraduate Geoscience Education with the NSF CCLI/TUES program Ten Years of Transforming Undergraduate Geoscience Education 2012 From 2002-2012 offered 118 workshops and events attended by more than 2000 geoscience faculty and 800 postds/students. ~20% of geoscience faculty Lots of different short workshops -2.5 to 5 days long 5000 pages of website content generated by participants for their colleagues that couldn’t attend Starting Point Website Heather Macdonald College of William & Mary, Cathryn Manduca SERC, Carleton College David Mogk Montana State University Barbara Tewksbury Hamilton College Rachel Beane Bowdoin College David McConnell North Carolina State Univ. Katryn Wiese City College of San Francisco Michael Wysession Washington University An NSF-DUE CCLI/TUES Phase 3 Program

A Community Supporting Improved Teaching A geoscience education community that learns from one another and from experts Faculty make an informed responses to specific teaching circumstances Underpinning philosophy Improving teaching through learning together Introduce research on learning All workshops addressed active learning – how people learn level All were designed for active learning All involved faculty in working on how they would use what they learned in their own teaching All produced web- content summarizing what was learned Did it work – administered a national survey of geoscience faculty in 2004, 2009, and 2012 Inquired about teaching practices, how learned about pedagogy and content and how contributed knowledge back to the community Observational study of 200 geoscience faculty to validate results Several interview studies as part of the project evaluation to understand what was happening Sharing of Innovation

Serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops

Serc.carleton.edu/sp

What Happened? National Survey of Geoscience Faculty (2004-2207 responses, 2009-2874 responses 2012-2466 responses) Teaching practices How learn about pedagogy and content How contribute knowledge to the community Observation Study (200+ faculty) Interview Studies as part of evaluation (120 faculty)

- Up to date

Teaching Styles : Faculty reporting frequent use of small group discussion, whole class discussion, or in-class exercises with or without the use of any other methods. Education focused faculty out perform on most measures related to practices related to education research: metacognition, student centered learning guided data analysis (71% education-focused faculty, 61% geoscience research-focused faculty, 60% teaching faculty; c2 = 44.62; p <0.001) student data collection to solve a problem (53%, 46%, 44%; c2 = 30.66; p <0.001) problems of national or global interest (64%, 52%, 52%; c2 = 53.51; p <0.001) problems of local community interest (46%, 34%, 32%; c2 = 49.23; p <0.001) study skills or time management reflection (45%, 26%, 35%; c2 = 15.42; p <0.001) learning success reflection (56%, 39%, 40%; c2 = 59.79; p <0.001) problem solving strategies reflection (52%, 43%, 39%; c2 = 52.24; p <0.001) student motivation (79%, 66%, 66%; c2 = 74.58; p <0.001) low stakes opportunities for testing (70%, 55%, 58%; c2 = 28.95; p <0.001), time for students to get to know each other (65%, 48%, 51%; c2 = 84.13; p <0.001) teamwork and collaborative learning (76%, 56%, 60%; c2 = 86.22; p <0.001) Cutting Edge workshop participants who also make use of the website are 1.5 times more likely to spend more than 20% of class time on activities, questions, or discussion, and 1.2 times more likely to report teaching using an active learning teaching strategy, as opposed to an active lecture teaching strategy, than are respondents who had neither used the website nor attended a Cutting Edge workshop.

Is Teaching Improving? 2/15/17 – Up to date  

Engaged Learners Use Research Based Practices in their Yes! – Research on Teaching and Learning is Making its Way into the Classroom Engaged Learners Use Research Based Practices in their Independent learner vs structured learning opportunity Peer instruction and learning communities appear important Learning about teaching in shorter doses has an impact

Similar behavior of faculty integrating learning over time reported in this anthropologic study. Tracking to student learning – not done in this study because students are everywhere.

Effective Teaching and Learning Research on Teaching and Learning Ideal World Effective Teaching and Learning Research on Teaching and Learning Increased focus on using same community strategy tofostering research

Meanwhile – Research efforts increased, GER positions established

Community approach applied to GER Series of workshops creating research agenda, community, and onramp GER Division

Strength of Evidence Pyramid Like others, and as pointed out in DBER report – most work is low on this scale of evidence – how to move up to community scale

1,592 Complete Sets of Student Data 7,426 Partial Sets of Student Data 1,592 Complete Sets of Student Data Based on a combination of a “teaching_materials_project” export completed on 1/18 and the results of the REACH survey. Slightly less than half of all students enrolled in pilot testing/IP sites are represented in the student data collected. Generalizable knowledge – 1 faculty will adopt and adapt materials; 2)website, word of mouth, and PD effort together are leading to broad visibitity

Rendezvous

A Thriving Community

A Community Supporting Improved Teaching Challenges to Continued Improvement A Community Supporting Improved Teaching Improved Teaching A geoscience education community that learns from one another and from experts Faculty make an informed responses to specific teaching circumstances Growing beyond 20% - not just a diffusion problem; structural/context problems ala Kezar, Henderson, Slakey Issues of research – scaling up type of evidence Sustaining the cycle is not free and requires not only backbone but also ongoing activities/projects Financial model is not mature – consider science model and variey of supports (prof societies, grants) Sharing of Innovation