Measuring the Reach and Influence of InTeGrate Materials on Faculty Teaching Practices

Wednesday 4:30pm-5:45pm Beren Auditorium
Poster Session Part of Wednesday Poster Session

Session Chairs

Kristin O'Connell, Carleton College
Ellen Iverson, Carleton College
Kathryn Sheriff, Mercer University
InTeGrate, Interdisciplinary Teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future, aims to dramatically increase Earth literacy for undergraduate students to better prepare them to address complex societal challenges. To achieve this goal, InTeGrate seeks to grow the community of instructors that teach about Earth in the context of society, utilizing materials and ideas developed by the project. The project sought to measure the reach and influence of InTeGrate materials and ideas on faculty teaching practices. Reach was characterized as falling in one of three categories: faculty who helped create InTeGrate materials and assessments, faculty who were "mentored" in InTeGrate ideas and materials to develop model programs adapted to their local context, and those faculty who accessed InTeGrate content independently through the website, webinars, and workshops.

To establish the uptake and influence of InTeGrate, the project collected course data and reports from the material developers and the "mentored" faculty, along with "reach" surveys administered more broadly in December of 2016 and October-November of 2017. We see that the InTeGrate community is growing and, to-date, involves over 1000 faculty from over 700 institutions. These faculty report teaching courses that adopted, adapted, or were inspired by InTeGrate materials to over 70,000 enrolled students. All 50 states, Puerto Rico, India, and Micronesia are represented from diverse institutions including four-year colleges, two-year colleges, and minority serving institutions. These are conservative estimates of overall uptake and influence, as they only include respondents. Additionally, materials developers and "mentored" faculty reported that InTeGrate influenced the ways in which they assess and think about student learning as well as the types of pedagogies they use, and respondents from both groups indicated that experience with InTeGrate influenced the manner in which they plan their courses and the content they use.