Southern Illinois University Edwardsville NSF IUSE EHR Evaluation:

Evaluand continues their partnership with the STEM Center at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) with a collaborative evaluation of a Design and Development Research study funded by the National Science Foundation, under their IUSE: EHR undergraduate STEM education program. The 3-year STEM Futures project aims to gather evidence about the promise of efficacy of a course design scaffold that integrates foundational, humanistic, and meta-knowledge in STEM learning across the very different institutional contexts of a public land grant university, a public regional university, and an Hispanic-serving institution.

The instructional team functions as a community of practice, providing mutual feedback informed by personal reflection, student outcomes, and digital StoryMap portfolios. These strategies are implemented through three new STEM Futures courses designed to broaden participation in STEM by increasing relevance and interest for students—particularly among those historically marginalized in STEM learning—to prepare students for 21st-Century science and technology careers. Using a mixed-method approach, project researchers will (a) examine instructors’ adaptations and experience with the design framework, and (b) determine course impacts on student understandings, critical thinking, self-efficacy, and interest.

Evaluand is charged with critically reviewing execution of the project team’s work—development of the innovations relating to the STEM Futures course design scaffold, implementation of the model as applied in selected courses among the partner institutions, and completion of the research proposed to examine use of framework-derived courses and their impact on learning. Evidence for the process-and-product evaluation will be collected through task and timeline tracking, reviews of deliverables for the project, and quarterly, semi-structured interviews with the PI and her teammates.