Project Grant 2235516

This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $599,867 supports the development of instructional design principles to improve student mindset and persistence in introductory physics courses. Funded under the NSF's STEM Education program (CFDA 47.076), the three-year award to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign aims to establish practices that integrate physics epistemology, growth mindset, and sense of belonging. Through a design-based research approach involving mixed methods, the project will iteratively design a large-enrollment introductory physics course structure emphasizing three learning beliefs: valuing learning over time, resolving wrong ideas, and engaging with peers' ideas. Design iterations will be informed by student reflections, observations, interviews and surveys to create clear principles for coherently communicating these productive beliefs through curriculum and policies. The resulting improvements aim to positively impact early undergraduate persistence in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields.