Communities of practice for engaging faculty in STEM course reform

Laura Hahn, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Selected as a Rapid Talk at the NSEC 2017 National Conference

Program Activities Type

Teaching Circles/Learning Communities

Program Components

Interdepartmental Collaboration
Pedagogical Training
Undergraduate Research
Institutional Systems:Strategic Planning
Professional Development:Curriculum Development
Supporting Students:Student Engagement

Target Audience

College/University Staff
Institution Administration
Non-tenure Track Faculty
Tenured/Tenure-track Faculty
Undergraduate Majors

Program Point of Intervention

College/School

Program Description

At large research-intensive universities, teaching STEM at scale has posed instructional challenges to faculty who are unaccustomed to addressing pedagogy in a collective, sustainable manner. At our institution, through strategic implementation of communities of practice, we are beginning to integrate the qualities of a strong, collaborative research culture into the context of teaching.

Program Purpose

At large, research-intensive universities, teaching STEM at scale has posed instructional challenges to faculty who are unaccustomed to addressing pedagogy in a collective, sustainable manner. Seasoned faculty members, managing their courses in isolation, are often reluctant to adopt evidence-based instructional practices that are known to improve both teaching and learning. Even when faculty adopt evidence-based practices, this isolation in teaching limits the spread of knowledge and use of these practices. On the other hand, these same faculty members operate in a research culture of collaboration, experimentation, and solving hard problems. While faculty know how to advance the state of the art, they don't apply this knowledge to their teaching.

Recent literature on changing instructional practices in STEM have highlighted the ineffectiveness of "top-down" mandates and of isolated faculty development workshops that disseminate "best practices." Collaborative teaching models, in which novice instructors actively engage in the creation of new teaching methods may be more effective. At our institution, through strategic implementation of communities of practice, we are beginning to integrate the qualities of our research culture into the context of teaching.

Program Goals

Our goal has been to create, expand, and continually improve a competitive, internally funded grant program for communities of practice to improve undergraduate education:
1. Use the challenge of teaching at scale to motivate faculty engagement. This is both an intellectual challenge and a practical concern for faculty at large research institutions.
2. Elevate the perceived value of teaching excellence in the college. We have introduced the notion that we should "teach like we do research" through our program.
3. Use a bottom-up approach to decision making that engages and values faculty input, creating shared leadership.
4. Iterate on our approach by focusing on continual improvement.

Program Activities

a. Secure funding. The office of our dean has funded this program since 2012. As our institution faces severe financial issues, we have had to justify continued funding.
b. With key faculty (known as Education Innovation Fellows, EIFs), develop a proposal process that mirrors a research proposal process, identifies big instructional challenges, and specifies expectations for communities of practice. An annual call-for-proposals to the Strategic Instructional Innovations Program (SIIP) encourages teams of at least three faculty to form a community of practice, committing to meet weekly during the year to design and implement a course or curricular innovation. The administrative team evaluates proposals based on evidence of support from departmental administration, collaborative development and ownership of the proposal and project, valued faculty and student outcomes, sustainability and positive trajectory, and a viable work plan.
c. Embed faculty peer mentors (EIFs) who support teams, promote "teach like we do research," encourage a scholarly approach to the innovations, cross-pollinate, and provide feedback to the administrative team. These mentors have been central to the success of SIIP.

a. Funding for projects and Education Innovation Fellows. Mentors are paid $6000 per year, and grants have ranged from $3500 to $100,000. Since 2012 SIIP has awarded a total of nearly three million through 28 grants across nine departments, with twelve interdisciplinary communities of practice. We should point out here that our analyses show no correlation between funding level and quality of team performance.
b. Program administrator. An academic professional coordinates this program as part of her broader responsibilities.
c. Weekly meetings. The communities of practice meet weekly, and the Education Innovation Fellows meet weekly with the program administrator to share updates and brainstorm solutions to problems.

Notes and Tips

- Rely on models that faculty understand. Our maxim of "teach like we do research" is one that our faculty identify with. Faculty research and scholarly work in STEM is done collaboratively with graduate students, post docs and other faculty. In research groups team members experiment, discuss findings, and use evidence to plan future research. The notion that implementing education innovations should follow a similar model should not be a difficult case to make to faculty.
- Advocate for a commitment to joint ownership. Collaborative approaches to instructional reform increase both the quality and sustainability of the reforms. In contrast, one-shot, or "lone ranger" approaches to reform rarely work or become adopted by a subsequent instructor.
- Embed pedagogical experts in the communities of practice. Their primary function is to educate the team about EBIP that could be adopted to the local context. In addition, they can make connections to other teams, thereby promoting the spread of innovations. They can also intervene when team members are stuck or in conflict.
- Institute an evaluative process. Evaluating the impact of innovations on student learning is complicated. Focusing on evaluating faculty practices over time can provide useful feedback that can subsequently optimize the intervention.

Evidence of Success

Spread of participation. We have used social networking theory to track the spread of innovations and participation patterns in SIIP.

Yearly evaluations: The administrative team evaluates each community of practice along five dimensions: administrative support, collaborative development, faculty outcomes, student outcomes, and sustainability or trajectory. The communities of practice also self-assess on these dimensions.

Classroom observations. The Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) (Smith et al., 2013) was used to examine how both the instructor and the students spent class time. According to our COPUS data, faculty who participate in ongoing communities of practice use more active learning methods than their peers who have not participated or stopped participating.

Publications and grant proposals. We keep track of publications and grant proposals that result from SIIP as an indication of the impact of the project. The number of STEM education grants funded and papers published has increased dramatically in the past three years.

Longevity of the community of practice. An important measure of success is the extent to which teams remain active without funding. A majority of faculty communities continue improving their courses even after funding for their efforts cease.

Future Work

- Seek external funding.
- Seek wider publicity for our efforts.
- Encourage teams to systematically assess the impact of their innovations.

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