Transforming learning and equity in UBE by cultivating an ecosystem of feedback (tune-BIO)

This National Science Foundation (NSF) project grant under the STEM Education program (CFDA 47.076) aims to improve instructional feedback practices in undergraduate biology education to help recruit and retain a diverse STEM workforce. The 4-year, $262,861 award to Simmons University will grow and expand a national network of biology instructors, psychologists, and education specialists. This network will collaboratively develop a freely accessible, online toolkit and repository of resources to enhance feedback in undergraduate biology classrooms. The project will also establish regional hubs across the country to disseminate these feedback-enhancing resources to instructors. Simmons University has a $18,582 sub-award to Assumption University, where a co-PI will assist with planning, executing, and assessing the project activities.

Abstract

The world needs more stem graduates to meet escalating global challenges such as climate change and new infectious diseases. Attrition rates are high for all stem fields, but highest for members of underrepresented groups. Traditional undergraduate biology education (UBE) is characterized by a weed-out culture that relies on high-stakes, objective assessments with little feedback and opportunities for revision. A supportive environment that includes frequent and supportive feedback may be crucial for attracting and retaining students in UBE. Students from underrepresented groups and first-generation college students are most likely to benefit from these practices but are least likely to encounter them in the classroom. For this reason, the overarching goal of this project is to improve instructional feedback practices in ways that help recruit and retain a diverse and educated stem workforce. Work from a previous RCN-UBE incubator grant suggests that college instructors are less satisfied with their feedback practices compared to their grading or assessment practices, and research suggests that timely, constructive, frequent feedback is one of the best ways to improve learning. Therefore, the proposed project strategically focuses its efforts on enhancing an ecosystem of supportive and informative feedback, with intentional efforts to provide a supportive academic environment, a strong predictor of increased student retention particularly for underrepresented persons. The investigators will grow and expand the network, which includes biology instructors, psychologists, scholars of pedagogy, and educational specialists from across the country. This network will collaboratively develop a freely accessible, online toolkit and repository of resources aimed to enhance feedback in the undergraduate classroom. In addition, this proposal will help form and support regional hubs across the country that will develop free events to instructors in close geographic proximity, to further motivate and inform instructors of these feedback-enhancing resources. This work proposed here will be transformative to UBE because IT will provide UBE instructors with appropriate, readily available tools and assist in their dissemination around the country. This project is being jointly funded by the directorate for biological sciences, division of biological infrastructure, and the directorate for education and human resources, division of undergraduate education as part of their efforts to address changes posed in vision and change in undergraduate biology education: a call to action (http://visionandchange/finalreport/). 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.- subawards are planned for this award.