Discipline: Mathematics & Statistics
Subcategory: STEM Science and Mathematics Education
Qingxia Li - Fisk University
Co-Author(s): Thomas Gross, Western Kentucky University; Patricia McCarroll, Fisk University
The overall goal of this project is to increase academic performance, to prepare and motivate students to pursue education and careers in STEM disciplines, and to develop an assessment and STEM educational intervention that could be implemented at the national level. An academic experience survey revealed that the major reasons Fisk Biology majors switch to non-STEM disciplines are: (1) poor “faculty teaching” due to instructor’s failing to link concepts to applications that are perceived as ‘relevant’, (2) student performance in mathematics courses, and (3) low-perceived self-efficacy. This project addressed these three issues via Intrusive Learning, achieved by creating a Learning Community (LC). To connect mathematics concepts with biology, reduce student’s math anxiety, and increase student self-efficacy, intrusive learning communities for College Algebra and General Biology I were created, involving weekly sessions led by trained Peer Partnership Learning leaders to reinforce course content and work on seven mathematics projects related to biology. In addition to evaluating the efficacy of LC, a collaborative team including STEM and social science researchers applied a Performance Pyramid model (Wedman, 2011) to examine the extent to which the LC intervention reflects the influences of Performance Pyramid support systems. The data were collected for both treatment and control sessions in Fall 2018. A discussion of the data analysis will be discussed.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): The project described was supported by National Science Foundation HBCU-UP-BPR project with Grant number 1719262.
Faculty Advisor: None Listed,