Yale investigators will lead a $2.8 million, four-year effort to assess scientific teaching practices and their impact on student achievement. The project will evaluate the effectiveness of the National Academies Summer Institutes faculty development program.
The grant was awarded by the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation.
Mark Graham, PhD, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and evaluation director at the Center for Scientific Teaching at Yale, is co-principal investigator of the grant. Jo Handelsman, PhD, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, is the grant's principal investigator.
Over the last decade, almost 1,000 faculty and instructional staff have trained in "scientific teaching" at the National Academies Summer Institutes (SIs). SIs are designed to teach effective use of active learning and assessment with attention to fostering learning by diverse students. The SI curriculum features an iterative approach to examining the learning benefits associated with these newly introduced teaching practices.
At present, only a few studies systematically examine the outcomes of faculty development efforts. This project is an assessment of the effects of SI training on participants' teaching practices and their students' outcomes.
Yale University, the University of Colorado Boulder, Cornell University, and the University of Connecticut will collaborate on the effort.