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This report is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DUE WIDER – 1256221 “Metrics to Shift Institutional Culture Towards Evidence-based Instructional Practices”
Useful Links
Essential Questions & Data Sources for Continuous Improvement of Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning is intended to be a useful resource for the individuals and institutions who work together to help foster continuous improvement of undergraduate STEM education.
Informed by the broad literature on post-secondary STEM education, this resource draws primarily from the Association of American Universities’ experience in implementing the AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative with our member campuses. It provides a set of questions that can be used at multiple levels within the university to assess progress along the set of key institutional elements identified in AAU’s Framework for Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning.
Questions are presented to examine the pedagogical, scaffolding, and cultural elements of the framework at each organizational level in the institution. Data sources and analytical tools available to answer these questions are profiled in a subsequent section. A final section provides guidance to address cross-cutting challenges to assessing improvement of undergraduate STEM teaching and learning.
By reflecting on these key questions, institutions can engage in discussions about undergraduate education; aggregate individual and program-level data to obtain an institutional portrait; and identify cross-cutting teaching and learning issues.
Strong measures and indicators provide a foundation to advance conversations among faculty members and institutional leaders, and to inform decision-making about reforms in undergraduate STEM education.
Efforts to assess the quality of undergraduate teaching and learning face several types of challenges, including the collection and organization of data, as well as the rules and regulations on data governance, stewardship, sharing, and use.