Aspects of Large-Enrollment Online College Science Courses That Exacerbate and Alleviate Student Anxiety

This study of 2111 undergraduates examined the impact of online science courses on their anxiety. More than 50% of students reported experiencing at least moderate anxiety in online science courses. Aspects of online learning that increase and decrease anxiety are identified, and actions that instructors can take to lessen anxiety in online science courses are offered.

A Framework of College Student Buy-in to Evidence-Based Teaching Practices in STEM: The Roles of Trust and Growth Mindset

This investigation tests a college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) student buy-in framework and contributes to understanding the social and cognitive factors influencing students in evidence-based teaching contexts. Students’ level of commitment to instructors’ teaching practices can be key to attaining many desired student outcomes of undergraduate STEM education reform.

COLLEGE SCIENCE IN BASHKIRIA IN THE 1960-1980S

The article deals with the development of science in higher educational institutions of Bashkiria in the 1960- 1980s, also the problem of the growth of the number of scientific and scientific-pedagogical personnel. The paper shows the dynamics of creating of research sections (departments), research industrial branch and problem laboratories, research production units in the universities of the republic. Thus, the first research laboratory in the higher educational institutions of the republic appeared in 1960, and the first research sections (departments) in 1963. The paper shows that in institutional terms, research activities were particularly intensively developed in the Ufa Oil and Aviation Institutes, the Bashkir State University. For some time, from 1963 to 1967, the former research institutes of the Bashkir branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences were part of the BSU; namely the Institute of Organic Chemistry and the Institute of Biology. However, the most rapid emergence of research laboratories in most universities of the republic dates back only to the 1980s, when they were established in the Bashkir State University, Medical and Agricultural Institutes. The article describes peculiarities of the formation of scientific trends and schools in various higher education institutions of the region. Thus, in the Bashkir Agricultural Institute, scientific research was closely related to agricultural production, in the Medical Institute - with medical and preventive practice in the republic. The Ufa Aviation and Petroleum Institutes, partly the University, served the production interests of large industrial enterprises. The article reveals that during the period under review, there occurred a certain integration of college science with academic and branch science, production, also increase the volume of contractual self accounting work took place The problem publication the results of scientific research remained acute during the study period. The issue of the implementing of the results of scientific activity in to production is touched upon. A number of difficulties in the development of science in higher educational institutions of the republic are identified in the article: the weakness of the experimental and production base, its inefficient use, the increase in the time of implementation of developments in to production, the low level of cooperation and coordination of scientific activities.

Gender Differences in Student Comfort Voluntarily Asking and Answering Questions in Large-Enrollment College Science Courses

Allowing students to ask and answer questions is a common practice employed by college science instructors. However, recent literature has identified that women participate in whole-class discussions less often than men. One hypothesized reason for this gender gap is that women may be less comfortable participating.

Using Pathway Modeling to Evaluate and Improve Student-Centered Teaching Practices in Co-Taught College Science Courses

This Essay demonstrates how course pathway modeling can help co-instructors better represent the complexity of student-centered teaching practices. It discusses how this approach can improve curricular design, course evaluation, student assessment, and communication between co-instructors.

Using Pathway Modeling to Evaluation and Improve Student-Centered Teaching Practices in Co-Taught College Science Courses

Student-centered teaching practices such as active learning continue to gain momentum in college science education. Many instructors committed to these innovative practices transform their classroom beyond the standard lecture. Nevertheless, widespread implementation of these practices is limited because the learning benefits for students are often attained through increased instructional complexity to which many instructors cannot commit. When co-instructors are teaching the course, the level of commitment to building a student-centered classroom may be even more profound. For these reasons, new tools are needed to help instructors and co-instructors plan, organize, evaluate, and communicate their classroom innovations. Pathway modeling is a tool with potential to fill this gap. Unlike curriculum mapping -- which identifies academic content gaps, redundancies, and misalignments by examining a series of courses within a plan of study – course pathway modeling creates a visual map of a single course and reveals how teaching practices influence short-, mid-, and long-term student learning outcomes. This essay demonstrates how course pathway modeling can help co-instructors better represent the complexity of student-centered teaching practices. We include guides for creating course pathway models and discuss how this approach offers the potential to improve curricular design, course evaluation, student assessment, and communication between co-instructors.

Call on me! Undergraduates’ perceptions of voluntarily asking and answering questions in front of large-enrollment science classes

Allowing students to voluntarily ask and answer questions in front of the whole class are common teaching practices used in college science courses. However, few studies have examined college science students’ perceptions of these practices, the extent to which students choose to engage in these practices, and what discourages students from participating. In this study, we surveyed 417 undergraduates at a research-intensive institution about their experiences asking and answering questions in large-enrollment college science courses. Specifically, students answered questions about to what extent they perceive voluntarily asking and answering questions in large-enrollment science courses is helpful to them and why. They also answered questions about to what extent they engage in asking and answering questions in large-enrollment college science courses and what factors could discourage them from participating. Using binary logistic regression, we examined whether there were differences among students of different demographic groups regarding their opinions about asking and answering questions. We found that overwhelmingly students reported that other students voluntarily asking and answering instructor questions is helpful to them. Notably, compared to continuing generation students, first-generation students were more likely to perceive other students asking questions to be helpful. Despite perceiving asking and answering questions to be helpful, over half of students reported that they never ask or answer questions in large-enrollment college science courses during a semester, and women were more likely than men to report never asking questions. We identified fear of negative evaluation, or students’ sense of dread associated with being unfavorably evaluated, as a primary factor influencing their decision to answer instructor questions. This work adds to a growing body of literature on student participation in large-enrollment college science courses and begins to uncover underlying factors influencing student participation.

A Compendium of Rationales and Techniques for Active Learning

A review of Active Learning in College Science, a compendium of techniques for promoting active learning by students, reasons why faculty should adopt active-learning approaches, and suggestions for how to deal with resistance from faculty or students to these approaches.

A content analysis of pre-college lesson plans on human evolution

One of the most fundamental understandings within biology is evolution, yet often ascribed as one of the most misunderstood scientific concepts by the American public. Despite not being explicitly mentioned in most American science standards, human evolution is nevertheless taught as an engaging context for understanding complex evolutionary processes among pre-college science students. Therefore, pre-college science teachers seek out human evolution content experts (e.g., Smithsonian Institution, NOVA, ENSI) to procure curricula (lesson plans) to teach these concepts in their classrooms. For students to accurately understand human evolution, research recommends lesson plans employ a diversity of direct and indirect evolutionary evidence, infused with social science perspectives related to the nature of science (NOS) and/or socioscientific issues (SSI) to foster necessary conceptual change. Given such empirical affordances of using multiple sources of evidence and integrated social science perspectives to foster conceptual change in teaching human evolution, it is unknown to what extent these attributes are present in lesson plans created by these entities and targeted to pre-college science teachers. To ascertain to what extent pre-college lesson plans on human evolution employ these research-based best practices, this paper analyzed 86 lesson plans created by 18 entities with content expertise in human evolution concepts that had developed online pre-college lesson plans. Among the sampled lesson plans, less than one third (29%) presented a combination of direct and indirect evidence. Further, a mere 17% incorporated elements of NOS, where SSI (like historical (n = 3) and racial (n = 1)) perspectives were fewer. In sum, findings suggest available resources are deficient in fostering the conceptual change necessary for pre-college students to fully understand human evolution concepts. This study evidences a continued need to ensure best practices are incorporated into human evolution lesson plans created for pre-college teachers.