| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 30, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | April 15, 2016 |
| Award Number: | 1525058 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Mike Ferrara
mferrara@nsf.gov (703)292-2635 DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2021 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $2,436,349.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $2,436,349.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1 GRAND AVE BLDG 15 SAN LUIS OBISPO CA US 93407-9000 (805)756-2982 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
One Grand Avenue San Luis Obispo CA US 93407-0001 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
S-STEM-Schlr Sci Tech Eng&Math, IUSE |
| Primary Program Source: |
1300XXXXDB H-1B FUND, EDU, NSF |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
Education research continues to produce evidence that teaching methods that use active-learning strategies yield improved learning outcomes and student success across the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Yet, many college mathematics classes are not yet taught using such strategies. To address this problem, the project, "PROfessional Development and Uptake through Collaborative Teams (PRODUCT): Supporting Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) in Undergraduate Mathematics through Workshops, Research and Capacity-Building", is designed to increase institutional capacity to offer professional development for instructors. The active learning strategy of focus, known as "inquiry-based learning" (IBL), places emphasis on student creation, exploration, communication, collaboration, and experimentation with mathematical concepts, under the mentorship and guidance of an instructor. Building directly on previously funded work that produced and studied a successful professional development workshop model, this project will develop multiple new teams to conduct workshops and outreach activities on IBL teaching strategies (known as a "train the trainers" propagation model). Research conducted alongside the workshop activities will contribute to knowledge about effective strategies for encouraging use of active learning approaches such as IBL, and for supporting instructors as they learn to apply and adapt these approaches in their own classrooms.
PRODUCT will conduct 12 four-day intensive IBL workshops, as well as 15 short workshops and five Professional Development (PD) Preparatory Meetings, and will host a Professional Development Summit for mathematics faculty developers. Through these activities, PRODUCT will directly provide professional development for 320 undergraduate mathematics faculty, adapt and improve IBL PD materials, develop multiple new teams of faculty developers who will be prepared to engage additional faculty in the future, and develop a framework for building professional development capacity. A research-with-evaluation study will provide formative feedback, study the process and outcomes for development of the professional development teams, gather data to benchmark workshops led by new teams against a model known to be effective, and investigate the classroom practices of workshop participants to understand how the professional development experience shapes their teaching. The project will produce new knowledge about scaling up professional development programs through a careful and collaborative process to prepare teams of faculty developers and provide them with well-supported leadership experiences.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The PRODUCT project (NSF DUE-1525058) is focused on expanding the use of active, student-centered teaching methods called inquiry-based learning (IBL) in college math courses. Bottlenecks in the profession slow the uptake of IBL teaching in mathematics, and one of the levers for change to address these bottlenecks is professional development workshops.
From 2015 to 2021, fourteen intensive summer workshops were offered to a total of 362 college math instructors, who participated in activities to learn how to successfully and effectively implement IBL methods in their math courses. Addtionally in order to run a large number of workshops, this project trained teams of new facilitators, who are experienced IBL practitioners, to conduct these workshops.
One of the main results of this project is development of a workshop model and resources for scaling up professional development workshops, focused on uptake of IBL teaching practices. Teams of new facilitators have been able to achieve previously established benchmarks for workshop effectiveness. Hence, we have demonstrated that effective professional development workshops can be both effective in increasing uptake of IBL methods and scaled up to reach larger number of instructors each year. This implies that the mathematics profession is potentially able to make significant progress on uptake of IBL teaching and active learning more broadly, by offering enough intensive professional development to its members.
In addition to the work above, we developed online versions of our workshop to address the carbon footprint of travel and access (for instructors who are not able to travel to summer workshops). Online offerings may have larger impacts in the future, because online workshop can reach a much larger number math instructors from a broader spectrum of institutions.
We also offered more than 20 short, traveling workshops to plant the idea of IBL teaching to audiences new to IBL teaching. The primary purpose of short, traveling workshops workshops is outreach to pockets of the math community not yet using IBL teaching methods.
In summary, the broader impact of PRODUCT is in shifting the educational experience for thousands of students per year, and these impacts will continue into the future. A cohort of 362 participants will continue to teach using IBL methods. The 26 new facilitators have expanded the profession's capacity to offer professional development workshops related to IBL. Further, online versions of the intensive summer IBL workshops were created, and the success and scalability of the developed in-person and online IBL workshops suggest sustainable solutions to broadening uptake of IBL methods in the mathematics profession.
Last Modified: 11/29/2021
Modified by: Stan Yoshinobu
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