Connecting Contextual Factors to Academic Outcomes in Asynchronous Online Physics Courses

This BCSER Individual Investigator Development (IID) project will build the Principal Investigator's, an Associate Teaching Professor of Physics, capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research, with the goal of improving student learning in on-line STEM courses. In addition, to the planned professional development, the project will support a pilot STEM education research project that investigates on-line learning physics course design factors and student factors that impact learning outcomes. The pilot is designed to result in new knowledge about these factors in order to influence the design of on-line courses which are more and more common in STEM and to increase student learning and success in these asynchronous courses. Asynchronous online education allows students to choose the time to do their class work, filling a crucial need for students that are active military, that have full-time employment, family-care duties, or special accommodation needs. The PI will investigate the changing student population and the impact of different course elements on academic outcomes such as pre-post proctored conceptual tests. The findings from the interviews, focus groups and surveys will identify the factors that the students perceive as enablers or barriers to their success. This will lay the foundations for quantitative studies on how online course design impacts students' academic outcomes in asynchronous online physics courses with particular attention to non-traditional learners. Project findings will be shared through workshops and presentations at conferences. The success of this project will be assessed through regular meetings with the advisory board. The project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) program, which is designed to build investigators' capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research. 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.