Collaborative Research: Enhancing STEM Instructor Reflection by Automatically Detecting Instructional Practices

This project aims to serve the national interest by 1) automatically determining what instructional practices are being used in STEM higher education classrooms, and 2) sharing those practices with instructors in the service of educational improvement. This Level 1 Engaged Student Learning project addresses a key problem in modern STEM education: identifying instructional practices can be a time-consuming and subjective process. This project is designed to provide a carefully redesigned, free-to-use tool that allows STEM instructors to reflect on their current instructional practices by receiving tailored advice. For educational researchers, the project has the potential to document instructional practices at scale thereby supporting research on teaching practices and student success. The primary goal of this project is to create a tool that allows STEM instructors to receive automated feedback about their instruction that prompts genuine reflection and supports improvement of instruction. The scope includes the analysis of large-scale classroom observation data, validation of automated instructional practice detection, development of instructor-facing feedback features, and study of instructor use of the tool. In the development of this tool, this project aims to simultaneously advance the understanding of instructional characterization via advanced data mining approaches of large-scale observations of classroom behaviors. After instructional patterns are validated, the project plans to develop a tool that seeks to improve instructional quality, which in turn improves student learning outcomes. This project also includes plans to study the effectiveness of the developed tool as well as how to improve it. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. 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.