The Gateways to Learning (G2L): STEM Program seeks to address learning gaps in undergraduate STEM foundational courses at the University of Minnesota. This initiative dovetails with other University efforts to improve student learning and achievement in STEM foundational courses. Undergraduate STEM foundational courses are challenging courses to teach, given the complex subject matter, the breadth of content, their sequencing as prerequisites for desirable STEM majors and the varied academic backgrounds of non-majors and majors who take these courses. These high-stakes courses are the keystones to growing STEM majors and professionals.
Description
The Gateways to Learning (G2L) Program engages instructional teams to explore the causes of learning gaps and to design, implement and assess the effectiveness of teaching/course interventions in foundational courses. We envision this work as a collaboration and one that respects the autonomy and agency of the instructional teams.
Through a combination of analysis of course and student data, instructional team consultations, experiments with teaching and learning methods, and exploration of additional academic support for students, instructional teams will revise their courses, assignments, and class sessions to improve student learning with a focus on the challenge of reducing learning gaps.
Participating instructional teams will work over the course of four semesters through the following phases:
- Analyze course data on student learning and instructor practices as well as other relevant and available data
- Design interventions in teaching practices, learning activities and other course components
- Implement interventions in course design, teaching practices, learning activities and assessments, among other possibilities
- Assess the effectiveness of these interventions
- Revise and iterate interventions in response to assessments of effectiveness as well as instructor experience and discernment
- Sustain improvements and plan for continued development beyond the end of the G2L STEM Program
CEI facilitators will ground the work together in evidence-based pedagogy to foreground effective STEM teaching methods, as well as engaged STEM teaching.