Sarah L. Eddy

Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics

Significance The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has called for a 33% increase in the number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) bachelor’s degrees completed per year and recommended adoption of empirically validated teaching practices as critical to achieving that goal. The studies analyzed here document that active learning leads to increases in examination performance that would raise average grades by a half a letter, and that failure rates under traditional lecturing increase by 55% over the rates observed under active learning. The analysis supports theory claiming that calls to increase the number of students receiving STEM degrees could be answered, at least in part, by abandoning traditional lecturing in favor of active learning. To test the hypothesis that lecturing maximizes learning and course performance, we metaanalyzed 225 studies that reported data on examination scores or failure rates when comparing student performance in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses under traditional lecturing versus active learning. The effect sizes indicate that on average, student performance on examinations and concept inventories increased by 0.47 SDs under active learning (n = 158 studies), and that the odds ratio for failing was 1.95 under traditional lecturing (n = 67 studies). These results indicate that average examination scores improved by about 6% in active learning sections, and that students in classes with traditional lecturing were 1.5 times more likely to fail than were students in classes with active learning. Heterogeneity analyses indicated that both results hold across the STEM disciplines, that active learning increases scores on concept inventories more than on course examinations, and that active learning appears effective across all class sizes—although the greatest effects are in small (n ≤ 50) classes. Trim and fill analyses and fail-safe n calculations suggest that the results are not due to publication bias. The results also appear robust to variation in the methodological rigor of the included studies, based on the quality of controls over student quality and instructor identity. This is the largest and most comprehensive metaanalysis of undergraduate STEM education published to date. The results raise questions about the continued use of traditional lecturing as a control in research studies, and support active learning as the preferred, empirically validated teaching practice in regular classrooms.

Getting Under the Hood: How and for Whom Does Increasing Course Structure Work?

The authors explore the transferability of an active-learning intervention and expand upon the original studies by 1) disaggregating student populations to identify for whom the intervention works best and 2) exploring possible proximate mechanisms (changes in student behaviors and perceptions) that could mediate the observed increase in achievement.

Gender gaps in achievement and participation in multiple introductory biology classrooms.

Although females outnumber males in biology, this study of 23 different introductory biology classrooms reveals systematic gender disparities in student performance on exams and student participation when instructors ask students to volunteer answers to instructor-posed questions.

Males Under-Estimate Academic Performance of Their Female Peers in Undergraduate Biology Classrooms.

Women who start college in one of the natural or physical sciences leave in greater proportions than their male peers. The reasons for this difference are complex, and one possible contributing factor is the social environment women experience in the classroom. Using social network analysis, we explore how gender influences the confidence that college-level biology students have in each other’s mastery of biology. Results reveal that males are more likely than females to be named by peers as being knowledgeable about the course content. This effect increases as the term progresses, and persists even after controlling for class performance and outspokenness. The bias in nominations is specifically due to males over-nominating their male peers relative to their performance. The over-nomination of male peers is commensurate with an overestimation of male grades by 0.57 points on a 4 point grade scale, indicating a strong male bias among males when assessing their classmates. Females, in contrast, nominated equitably based on student performance rather than gender, suggesting they lacked gender biases in filling out these surveys. These trends persist across eleven surveys taken in three different iterations of the same Biology course. In every class, the most renowned students are always male. This favoring of males by peers could influence student self-confidence, and thus persistence in this STEM discipline.

A high-enrollment course-based undergraduate research experience improves student conceptions of scientific thinking and ability to interpret data.

The authors developed and assessed an innovative course-based undergraduate research experience that emphasized collaboration among students and focused on data analysis.

PORTAAL: A Classroom Observation Tool Assessing Evidence-Based Teaching Practices for Active Learning in Large Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Classes.

PORTAAL, a new evidence-based classroom observation tool, identifies 21 elements of classroom best practices for active learning that have been correlated with positive student outcomes in the education literature. After only 5 h of training, instructors can reliably use this tool to determine their alignment with these teaching practices.

Caution, Student Experience May Vary: Social Identities Impact a Student's Experience in Peer Discussions.

This study found that self-reported preferred roles in peer discussions in introductory biology classrooms can be predicted by social identities and that barriers to participation in peer discussions may impact certain student groups more than others.

How should we teach tree-thinking? An experimental test of two hypotheses

BackgroundPhylogenies are ubiquitous in college-level biology textbooks, yet many college students continue to struggle to interpret them correctly. Multiple activities and frameworks for teaching phylogenies have been proposed to address this problem. In an introductory biology course for majors, we tested two contrasting hypotheses about the best way for students to learn the basic principles of ‘tree-thinking’.MethodsWe constructed two 30-minute, pencil-and-paper-based guided group activities: one focused on using a character matrix to build a tree and one focused on analyzing an existing tree. Groups of three students completed one of these activities during one class session of a large lecture course. All students completed an identical assessment the night of the activity.ResultsWe confirmed that students in the two groups were of equal academic ability, and found that students in the ‘build your own tree’ treatment performed significantly better on the assessment than students in the ‘analyze an existing tree’ treatment. We also had first-year graduate students in a Biology PhD program complete the assessment, without doing the activity beforehand. The scores of undergraduates who had done a modified version of the tree building activity were indistinguishable from those of the graduate students.ConclusionWe recommend simple tree-building activities be a standard part of training for tree-thinking in introductory biology.

Cognitive Difficulty and Format of Exams Predicts Gender and Socioeconomic Gaps in Exam Performance of Students in Introductory Biology Courses

In a study examining more than 4800 student exams in introductory biology, the authors found that exam characteristics differentially impact students based on gender and socioeconomic status.

Student perception of group dynamics predicts individual performance: Comfort and equity matter

Active learning in college classes and participation in the workforce frequently hinge on small group work. However, group dynamics vary, ranging from equitable collaboration to dysfunctional groups dominated by one individual. To explore how group dynamics impact student learning, we asked students in a large-enrollment university biology class to self-report their experience during in-class group work. Specifically, we asked students whether there was a friend in their group, whether they were comfortable in their group, and whether someone dominated their group. Surveys were administered after students participated in two different types of intentionally constructed group activities: 1) a loosely-structured activity wherein students worked together for an entire class period (termed the ‘single-group’ activity), or 2) a highly-structured ‘jigsaw’ activity wherein students first independently mastered different subtopics, then formed new groups to peer-teach their respective subtopics. We measured content mastery by the change in score on identical pre-/post-tests. We then investigated whether activity type or student demographics predicted the likelihood of reporting working with a dominator, being comfortable in their group, or working with a friend. We found that students who more strongly agreed that they worked with a dominator were 17.8% less likely to answer an additional question correct on the 8-question post-test. Similarly, when students were comfortable in their group, content mastery increased by 27.5%. Working with a friend was the single biggest predictor of student comfort, although working with a friend did not impact performance. Finally, we found that students were 67% less likely to agree that someone dominated their group during the jigsaw activities than during the single group activities. We conclude that group activities that rely on positive interdependence, and include turn-taking and have explicit prompts for students to explain their reasoning, such as our jigsaw, can help reduce the negative impact of inequitable groups.