Promising Practices in Undergraduate STEM Education

In STEM education transformation, it is important to evaluate changes in light of implementation and student performance standards. Froyd puts together eight promising practices in STEM transformation, and how these practices can be evaluated.

1. Use of learning outcomes
2. Organize students in small groups
3. Organize students in learning communities to promote integrated and interdisciplinary learning
4. Organize content based on problem or scenario
5. Provide students feedback through systematic formative assessment
6. Design in-class activities to actively engage students
7. Provide students with the opportunities to engage in undergraduate research
8. Have faculty initiate student – faculty interactions

Implementation standards and student performance standards can be used to evaluate each of these practices. Implementation standards include:

1. whether the practice is relevant for the course
2. whether sufficient resource is available
3. the amount of effort required for the implementation

Student performance standards include:

1. whether there is any performance gain with the new practice compared to other students
2. comparison of different approaches to the implementation of the same practice, different class settings, students, etc.

Reference:

Froyd, J. (2008). White Paper on Promising Practices in Undergraduate STEM Education. Retrieved on October 30, 2009 from here.