| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
|
| Initial Amendment Date: | April 27, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | April 27, 2020 |
| Award Number: | 2027665 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Mary Crowe
mcrowe@nsf.gov (703)292-5188 DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | May 1, 2020 |
| End Date: | April 30, 2022 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $20,952.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $20,952.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
|
| History of Investigator: |
|
| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1179 GRANT ST INDIANA PA US 15701-2898 (724)357-2223 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
|
| Primary Place of Performance: |
6311 Crombie Street Pittsburgh PA US 15217-2510 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
|
| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
|
| Parent UEI: |
|
| NSF Program(s): | IUSE |
| Primary Program Source: |
|
| Program Reference Code(s): |
|
| Program Element Code(s): |
|
| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) greatly expand opportunities for students to participate in authentic research early in their academic career. Research participation is linked to increased student persistence in STEM, especially for students from groups that are underrepresented in STEM. Thus, by increasing the number and diversity of students who have a research experience, CURES also broaden participation in STEM careers. CURES typically engage student teams in hands-on work in laboratories or field sites. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus, the national CURE education landscape quickly and dramatically changed to a fully ?online? mode, with limited opportunity for advance planning. Thus, this situation presents a unique and urgent opportunity to explore how CUREs evolve in a new online environment, as well as whether they continue to achieve core CURE educational goals. It also allows for assessment of whether these rapid course changes have equitable outcomes for all students, including first-generation students, students on financial aid, and from different socioeconomic backgrounds. If CUREs are a solution for engaging large numbers of early-stage undergraduates in authentic STEM research, then the feasibility to translate CUREs online must be known. It is important to understand the structure of these newly online CUREs, in what situation they are effective, and who they benefit. The results of this project have the potential to expand understanding of CURE instructional approaches and outcomes, for both practitioners and researchers. Additionally, this unexpected shift to online coursework is an opportunity to engage broader higher education audiences in new thinking about course configuration, online effectiveness, and supports and barriers for online teaching.
The purpose of this project is twofold: 1) capture and analyze how CURE course activities are rapidly translated into online formats; and 2) assess effects of course changes on students with different demographic profiles. It will provide early evidence to answer if, how, and why CURE benefits are realized through the different modality of online teaching. Importantly, this project will not make conclusions about the quality of online CUREs or online teaching overall; instead, it will explore which CURE activities can be readily delivered online, how they get delivered, how students respond, and how this new way of teaching changes/expands how instructors think about CUREs. The present project will use a mixed-methods design to track online implementation of CURE courses in two samples. The first sample will include a diverse set of local CUREs that span multiple STEM departments and have an array of course objectives/structures. This collection of CUREs will afford an in-depth, qualitative case study investigation that will capture and analyze instructors? thinking, plans, and products, before, during, and after the shift from hands-on, laboratory-based CUREs to ones that are now abruptly online. The second sample will include CURE courses from a national network, which will allow us to explore more broadly and in a more quantitative way, how a large number of instructors transitioned to online. The project will also examine the resulting emotions, motivations, and experiences of students during this transition and how this semester?s student outcomes compare to those from prior years, through analysis of a historical student outcomes database. This approach will provide broad reach and comparison among a relatively homogenous set of CUREs, since all CURE instructors in this network are trained in the same research approach, have similar course objectives, and use similar materials. This RAPID award is made by the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education program in the Division of Undergraduate Education (Education and Human Resources Directorate), using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
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.
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 goals of this project were to investigate the ramifications of the emergency transition to online teaching of course-based research experiences (CREs) in the SEA-PHAGES program. The study was conducted in the context of the SEA-PHAGES program (a large scale, multi-institutional, course-based research experience in lab microbiology. An open-ended survey was sent to all instructors (n=109) asking about actions taken in relation to the emergency transition to remote learning as a result of COVID-19 restrictions and survey data on endpoint outcomes, using the Persistence in the Sciences (PITS) assessment tool, was collected from students in the SEA-PHAGES program (n=1891). Results showed that instructors reported far more difficulties for the wet-laboratory Discovery section of the SEA-PHAGES program than for the computer-based Bioinformatics section. For the quantitative data, results show that the remote Bioinformatics section of the SEA-PHAGES program produced equitable results with prior face-to-face manifestations of this course. This was not the case for the remote wet-lab Discovery sections of the course. As such the results indicate that a remote computer-based CRE is a viable educational option even during the stress of a sudden transition in educational practice. This finding results from a careful matching process and is robust for the different demographic groups studied here. The PITS survey used in this study has been shown to be good at differentiating CRE and non-CRE experiences. In this case, the remote version of the Bioinformatics section of the SEA-PHAGES program was equitable (and even better on some variables) to face-to-face implementations of this CRE. This finding has ramifications beyond the Covid-19 pandemic and suggests some criteria that can be used to design remote CREs that may be effective. This project was able to provide timely advice and recommendations to SEA-PHAGES faculty on how to prepare for the Fall 2020-1 semester in terms of course design. Institutions within the SEA-PHAGES program transitioned to Bioinformatics or a new hybrid model of wet-laboratory Discovery and Bioinformatics in the same semester
Last Modified: 05/03/2022
Modified by: David Hanauer
Please report errors in award information by writing to: awardsearch@nsf.gov.
