Improving Undergraduate STEM Education: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR)

Overview

<p>The IUSE: Education and Human Resources (IUSE: EHR) program seeks to promote novel, creative, and transformative approaches to generating and using new knowledge about STEM teaching and learning to improve STEM education for all undergraduates. Through its investments, the program seeks to support development, and implementation, and research efforts that<strong> (1)</strong> bring recent advances in STEM disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge into undergraduate education, <strong>(2)</strong> adapt, improve, and incorporate evidence-based practices into STEM teaching and learning, and <strong>(3)</strong> lay the groundwork for institutional improvement. Investments made by the IUSE: EHR program seek to contribute to the educational and capacity-building goals of the NSF Directorate for Education and Human Resources and to the strategic goals and objectives of the NSF.</p> <p>The IUSE: EHR program supports projects designed to contribute to a future in which all undergraduate students are fully engaged in their STEM learning. The IUSE: EHR program promotes <strong>(1)</strong> Engaged Student Learning: the development, testing, and use of teaching practices and curricular innovations that will engage students and improve learning, persistence, and retention in STEM, and <strong>(2)</strong> Institutional and Community Transformation: the transformation of colleges and universities to implement and sustain highly effective STEM teaching and learning.</p> <p><strong>All projects supported by IUSE: EHR must:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Demonstrate a strong rationale for project objectives or incorporate and build on educational practices that are demonstrably effective</li> <li>Contribute to the development of exemplary undergraduate STEM education</li> <li>Add to the body of knowledge about what works in undergraduate STEM education and the conditions that lead to improved STEM teaching and learning</li> <li>Measure project progress and achievement of project goals</li> </ul> <p>To accomplish these goals, IUSE: EHR projects may focus their activities at any level, including the student, faculty, institutional or community5 levels. Development, propagation, adaptation, and transferability of evidence-based practices are also important considerations. Projects should consider designing materials and practices for use in a wide variety of institutions or institutional types.</p> <p><strong>Topics of interest to the IUSE: EHR program include, but are not limited to, the following:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Development and study of the efficacy of innovative teaching and learning practices and resources</li> <li>Development, testing, and dissemination of instruments for measuring student outcomes</li> <li>Efforts to increase the diversity of the STEM workforce including K-12 teachers and/or the faculty and institutions engaged in work to improve undergraduate STEM education</li> <li>Faculty professional development to increase the use of evidence-based teaching practices</li> <li>Implementation of and research on sustained change processes involved in adopting evidence-based and effective instruction within or across departments, disciplines, or institutions</li> <li>Efforts to achieve STEM educational goals through innovative partnerships, for example with community organizations, local, regional, or national industries, centers for teaching and learning, professional societies, or libraries,</li> <li>Propagating and sustaining transformative and effective STEM teaching and learning through institutional practices or involvement of professional societies</li> </ul> <p>IUSE: EHR also welcomes proposals to conduct workshops and conferences aimed at improving undergraduate STEM education, developing implementation practices, and/or assembling research partnerships and agendas.</p> <p><strong>Track 1: Engaged Student Learning</strong></p> <p>The Engaged Student Learning (ESL) track focuses on design, development, and research projects that involve the creation, exploration, or implementation of tools, resources, and models. Projects must show high potential to increase student engagement and learning in STEM. Projects may focus directly on students or indirectly serve students through faculty professional development or research on teaching and learning. Whatever the focus, all projects should be both evidence-based and knowledge-generating, with well-developed plans to study student experiences and evaluate student outcomes. NSF's investment in research and development for Engaged Student Learning in undergraduate STEM education encompasses a range of approaches including:</p> <ul> <li>Development and implementation of novel instructional methods or adaptation of existing evidence-based pedagogies in STEM disciplines or in multi-disciplinary or interdisciplinary courses or programs</li> <li>Design and assessment of metrics aiming to measure STEM teaching and learning or student outcomes</li> <li>Local, regional, or national efforts to develop and disseminate tools, resources, or models designed to improve STEM teaching and learning</li> <li>Discipline-based educational research or research that spans multiple disciplinary domains</li> <li>Faculty learning through professional development</li> <li>Re-envisioning or adaptation of learning environments</li> <li>Co-curricular activities that increase student motivation and persistence in STEM</li> <li>Investigation of novel instructional tools or learning systems, including cyber-learning or learning technologies</li> <li>Synthesis or meta-analysis of prior work to examine differences in findings across studies and variations in the types of interventions, for whom, and under what conditions</li> <li>Collaborations between two-year and four-year institutions to develop innovative pathways for student transfers and success</li> </ul> <p><strong>Track 2: Institutional and Community Transformation</strong></p> <p>The Institutional and Community Transformation (ICT) track funds innovative work applying evidence-based practices that improve undergraduate STEM education and research on the organizational change processes involved in implementing evidence-based practices. The emphasis of this track is on systemic change that may be measured at the departmental, institutional, or multi-institutional level, or across communities of STEM educators and/or educational researchers.</p> <p>Institutional and Community Transformation projects are expected to include one or more theories of change to guide the proposed work9. A theory of change functions to identify and organize the dimensions of the proposed work and is a critical component of ICT projects. Competitive proposals will examine the impact of deliberate interventions in undergraduate STEM education. While proposed projects will vary in approach and the underlying theory/theories of change identified, promising proposals will recognize that STEM higher education is a complex system and that achieving goals involves analyzing and addressing organizational factors, such as institutional policies and practices or opportunities for professional growth.</p> <p>ICT projects may focus on departments or colleges within institutions, entire institutions, on groups of institutions, or on STEM communities of educators, practitioners, and/or educational researchers. NSF's investment in research and development in institutional and community transformation encompasses a range of approaches, such as:</p> <ul> <li>Transformation of high-enrollment, lower-division courses within a discipline or across disciplines to include evidence-based teaching practices</li> <li>Developing disciplinary or interdisciplinary teaching evaluation rubrics that are rooted in a common research-based framework</li> <li>Development and propagation of faculty communities of practice to support efforts to improve accessibility or sustainability of evidence-based educational approaches</li> <li>Examination of change processes in colleges, universities, or academic communities and developing metrics and identifying best practices to guide the process of institutional transformation</li> <li>Re-envisioning of learning environments or support networks for faculty and students</li> <li>Inclusion of non-tenure-track faculty or instructors through policy or professional development</li> <li>Identification of common elements across disciplines, programs, institutions, or systems that support students from underrepresented groups to be successful in STEM</li> </ul>