NSEC and ASCN host a webinar on September 29 on the Developing Indicators for Undergraduate STEM Education

Help us shape a national indicator system for undergraduate STEM education. Join us for a webinar on the Preliminary Draft on Developing Indicators for Undergraduate STEM Education.

Register for the webinar

Hosted by: Network of STEM Education Centers (NSEC) and the Achieving Systemic Change Network (ASCN)

Date/Time: Thursday, September 29^th at 11:30 am ET – 12:30 pm ET

Speakers:

• Charles Henderson, Professor, Department of Physics and Mallinson Institute for Science Education; Co-Director, Center for Research on Instructional Change in Postsecondary Education, Western Michigan University; and member of the Committee on Developing Indicators for Undergraduate STEM Education, will provide an overview of the report.
• Discussion moderated by Noah Finkelstein (NSEC) and Martin Storksdieck (ASCN).
• Synthesizers: Kacy Redd and Linda Slakey are presenting at the NAS meeting on October 6 and will share what they hear from this webinar with the committee.

Register here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6351208348877760259. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Agenda

• 10 minutes Intro / summary from Charles Henderson
• 15 minutes – Reviewing Goals with the audience. We encourage you to not be shy and share your opinion! Table 2-2 in the report has a good overview of the goals, objectives, and strategies.
  • Are these the right goals?
  • Are any missing?
  • Are the goals prioritized in the right order?
• 15 minutes – Deep dive into Goal 3 and its objectives.
  • How do the objectives under Goal 3 align or not with the work that you do? Which of these are the most relevant to the work that you do? Are the strategies used to advance that objective, the ones that you use?
• 15 minutes – Indicators.
  • Is the committee missing any data sources? See below for a list of the data sources.

Purpose of the webinar

The purpose of the webinar is to solicit feedback for the National Academies on this Preliminary Draft on Developing Indicators for Undergraduate STEM Education. At this time, the committee has not begun developing indicators, but rather seeks public comments and suggestions on this draft framework. In the second phase of the study, the committee will consider your input to develop an indicator system that provides meaningful and useful information for the undergraduate STEM community.

Also, we encourage you to provide feedback to the committee here (link no longer available). The period for public comments is now open and will close on October 14th, 2016.

In preparation for the webinar - highlights from the report

Table 2-2 in the report has a good overview of the rich amount of information in Chapter 2.

Chapter 3 has beginning discussion about the possible sources of data. As an overview:

• U.S. Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) - 12-Month Enrollment; Completions; Graduation Rates; 200% Graduation Rates
• National Science Foundation's National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) - Enrollment; Intentions and Attrition; Earned S&E Degrees; Other Undergraduate STEM Indicators
• U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey on Educational Attainment - level of educational attainment; field of degree; earnings
• Student Achievement Measure - time to degree for first-time-full-time, part-time, and transfer students for 2 and 4 year degrees
• National Student Clearinghouse
• Community Colleges Trends and Statistics
• Association American Universities Data Exchange
• Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium
• Completion by Design
• National Survey of Student Engagement
• HERI Faculty Survey
• Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Freshman Survey

Questions that the committee would like feedback

1. The committee proposes 5 goals to improve the quality of undergraduate STEM education (see Chapter 2). Do these goals adequately represent your vision for undergraduate STEM? Should any of the goals mentioned in Chapter 2 be removed or modified? Should we add any goals?

2. The committee identifies 14 objectives around which national indicators for undergraduate STEM Education will be developed in Phase II of the study (see Chapter 2). Does this list adequately capture the range of topics for indicators measuring quality in undergraduate STEM? Should any of these objectives mentioned in Chapter 2 be removed or modified? Should we add any objectives?

3. The committee discusses various data sources on undergraduate STEM (see Chapter 3). Does this list of data sources adequately represent the available possibilities for measuring quality in undergraduate STEM? Should any of the sources be removed? Are there data sources missing from the list?

4. Are there additional issues related to measuring and improving quality in undergraduate STEM that are missing from the committee's proposed conceptual framework, goals, and objectives?

5. Please provide any additional commentary in the space provided.