Collaborative Research: Collaborating with Mathematicians to Enhance Teaching (COMET)

This project aims to serve the national interest by implementing evidence-based active learning pedagogy in university mathematics classes. Evidence-based active learning pedagogy can improve student learning outcomes in mathematics, yet the active learning pedagogy developed by mathematics educators is not widely used by mathematicians. One reason for this lack of uptake is that this active learning pedagogy was developed without consultation with mathematicians and thus may not align with mathematicians’ goals and values. This project will create a collaborative community in which mathematicians and mathematics educators work together to develop active learning pedagogy, implement this pedagogy in linear algebra classrooms, and discuss what transpired. The importance of this project is a practical model of how mathematics educators and mathematicians can collaborate to improve instructional practice and a theoretical model of how collaboration can improve mathematician’s teaching practice. The project will follow the design research paradigm in which the research team will simultaneously achieve the practical goal of organizing a collaboration that changes mathematicians’ pedagogical practice and a theoretical goal of developing a theoretical model for how mathematician’s pedagogical practice can change. The project will identify reasons why mathematicians may choose to use or not to use particular evidence-based active learning strategies in terms of mathematicians’ goals, values, and obligations to their students, discipline, and institution. When mathematicians prefer not to use a particular active learning pedagogical strategy, the project will show how this strategy can be modified to meet the goals of both mathematicians and mathematics educators and will identify the support that is needed for mathematicians to use the pedagogical strategy effectively. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Institutional and Community Transformation Track, the program supports efforts to transform and improve STEM education across institutions of higher education and disciplinary communities. 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.