The most recent call for universities to produce one million additional college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) over the next ten years focuses attention on the need for substantive changes to undergraduate STEM learning environments. Reform efforts aim at the widespread adoption of evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) by college and university faculty. Research on barriers to changing teaching practices shows the process to be a complex interplay between personal and contextual factors. The continued lack of EBIP adoption suggests the need for further studies to provide insight into how ideas around teaching innovation might be shared, especially in research-focused environments.

The "Mapping Change in Higher Education - Social Networks and STEM Reforms'' project conducted a set of interconnected studies exploring the teaching and research networks among  STEM faculty at three institutions. The work also explored faculty’s use of EBIPs within the context of social networks as well as institutional change initiatives focused on teaching reform.  This project provided a nuanced characterization of how social networks interface with other variables, such as local campus climates, faculty interdependence, and perceptions about and use of EBIPs. 

The findings provide a broad perspective about what social networks look like in higher education and how they are connected to local institutional cultures and local change efforts. Our mixed methods approach allows for the identification of practices, structures, and features of campus cultures that impede institutional transformation efforts. For example, study results indicate that while research discussion enhances teaching discussion, showing that the two major realms of faculty activity at research universities are not conducted in isolation from one another, leaders in the research network are no more likely than the average faculty member to be high level users of EBIPs.  Developing more collaborative environments between teaching and research, with a high degree of reciprocity, is an important takeaway from this work.

Additionally, this project identifies both challenges and opportunities related to leveraging social networks for change including insights into the types of relationships that support successful changes, department chair views towards institutional change, and the impacts of structures, such as coordinated courses, on instruction and knowledge sharing. The results shine important light on how day-to-day faculty interactions contribute to their instructional decisions, particularly highlighting the importance of close ties for sharing and receiving information about transformative practices. For example, teaching networks are fairly dense within departments with relatively few teaching discussions outside one’s academic department. In addition, innovative teaching knowledge tends to stay with users. These findings suggest the importance of strategies and structures that catalyze discussion among different groups of faculty and overcome self-assortment within the social network. 

Finally, the project has expanded upon previous research to help illuminate the goals that institutional change projects work toward as they are enacting multiple change strategies that include working with and between individual faculty and across multiple levels of institutional structures.

Last Modified: 12/06/2022
Modified by: Susan E Shadle