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

“This type of research is being referred to as second-generation education research (Eddy et al., 2013; Freeman et al., 2014) and will help refine and optimize active-learning interventions by identifying the critical elements that make an intervention effective.”

“Yet the different racial and ethnic groups that are included in the URM designation have very different cultures, histories, and exposure to college culture that could impact whether a particular classroom strategy is effective for them (Delpit, 2006).”

“Finally, feeling like they are part of a community increases both performance and motivation, especially for historically underrepresented groups (Walton and Cohen, 2007; Walton et al., 2012).”

“…of our study, arguably as important as increased performance, because a sense of being part of a community (belonging) is crucial for retention (Hurtado and Carter, 1997; Hoffman et al., 2002) and has been 464 CBE—Life Sciences Education correlated with increased performance for…”

“Thus, through increased engagement with the material (because of increased interest in it) student performance will increase (Carini et al., 2006).”

“When discussing reasons for leaving STEM, many students, particularly students of color and women, describe feelings of isolation and lack of belonging (Hewlett et al., 2008; Cheryan et al., 2009; Strayhorn, 2011).”

“The attendance result was surprising to us, because increased attendance has been shown to be a common result of making a classroom more active (Caldwell, 2007; Freeman et al., 2007); however, these previous interventions all assigned course points to in-class participation, whereas our…”

“This intervention decreased the achievement gap between students in the Educational Opportunities Program (students from educational or economically disadvantaged backgrounds) and those not in the program by 45% (Haak et al., 2011).”

“…R©” and “The American Society for Cell Biology R©” are registered trademarks of The American Society for Cell Biology. based education research (DBER; Singer et al., 2012) suggests that it is time to move beyond simply asking whether or not active learning works to more focused questions,…”

“…as important as increased performance, because a sense of being part of a community (belonging) is crucial for retention (Hurtado and Carter, 1997; Hoffman et al., 2002) and has been 464 CBE—Life Sciences Education correlated with increased performance for first-generation students (Stephens et…”

“Thus, the model used for each question was: Survey response = Intercept + β*SATI.Comb + β*Treat. p Values were adjusted to account for false discovery rates due to multiple comparisons (Pike, 2011).”

“To be confident that any gains we observed were due to the intervention and not these other sources of variation, we controlled for both exam cognitive level (cf. Crowe et al., 2008) and student prior academic achievement (for more details see Supplemental Material, section 2).”

“Finally, feeling like they are part of a community increases both performance and motivation, especially for historically underrepresented groups (Walton and Cohen, 2007; Walton et al., 2012).”

“National trends in K–12 education, revealing different achievement patterns and trajectories for black and Latin@ students, also challenge the assumption that URMs are a homogeneous group (Reardon and Galindo, 2009).”

“This finding is supported by both work in physics (Beichner et al., 2007), which found an intervention only worked for black”

“…across contexts cannot be assumed, as there is some evidence that the success of classroom interventions depends on the student populations in the classroom (Brownell et al., 2013), instructor classroom management style (Borrego et al., 2013), and the topics being taught (Andrews et al., 2011).”

“In biology, we are not aware of any studies that have explored the response of this population to an active-learning intervention, although there has been promising work with a psychology intervention (Harackiewicz et al., 2014).”

“Unfortunately, this work is only done in active-learning classrooms, and either there is no control group (cf. Keeler and Steinhorst, 1995; Cavanagh, 2011) or the study asks students to compare their experience with a different course with a different instructor and content in which they are currently enrolled (cf.”

“…acquisition from in class to before class opens up time in the classroom for the instructor to help students develop higher-order cognitive skills (Freeman et al., 2011), providing opportunities to encourage students to make connections between course content and real-world impacts and to work…”

“and white students, and work in psychology, which revealed Asian-American students do not learn as well when they are told to talk through problems out loud (Kim, 2002).”

“Courses with more active learning are positively correlated with increased student self-reported motivation and self-efficacy (van Wyk, 2012) and a deeper approach to learning (Eley, 1992).”

“These SI programs are effective, but can be costly (Barlow and Villarejo, 2004), and because of the cost, they are often not sustainable.”

“In addition, although students grouped in the category first generation share some characteristics, they are also very different from one another in terms of culture, background, and the barriers they face in the classroom (Orbe, 2004; Prospero et al., 2012).”

“The differences between first- and continuing-generation students have been shown to change how they respond to “bestpractices” in teaching at the college level, sometimes to the extent that they respond oppositionally (Padgett et al., 2012).”

“…that a change in the explanatory variable (e.g., presence or absence of the classroom intervention) has on the odds that a student will report a higher rather than a lower response (i.e., “strongly agree” vs. “agree”) averaged across all possible levels of response (Antoine and Harrell, 2000).”

“To learn, students must feel comfortable enough to be willing to take risks and engage in challenging thinking and problem solving (Ellis, 2004).”

“Preszler (2009) replaced a traditional course (3 h of lecture each week) with a reformed course that combined 2 h of lecture with 1 h of peer-led workshop.”

“…across contexts cannot be assumed, as there is some evidence that the success of classroom interventions depends on the student populations in the classroom (Brownell et al., 2013), instructor classroom management style (Borrego et al., 2013), and the topics being taught (Andrews et al., 2011).”

“This more interdependent environment also decreases anxiety and leads to increased participation in class (Fassinger, 2000) and critical thinking (Tsui, 2002).”

“Unfortunately, this work is only done in active-learning classrooms, and either there is no control group (cf. Keeler and Steinhorst, 1995; Cavanagh, 2011) or the study asks students to compare their experience with a different course with a different instructor and content in which they are…”

“Also, most of these studies have explored the impact of supplemen- tal instruction outside an actual science course on student achievement (reviewed in Tsui, 2007; Fox et al., 2009).”

“Courses with more active learning are positively correlated with increased student self-reported motivation and self-efficacy (van Wyk, 2012) and a deeper approach to learning (Eley, 1992).”

“Many students adopt the strategy of massing their study time and cramming just before exams (Michaels and Miethe, 1989; McIntyre and Munson, 2008).”

“…active-learning classrooms, and either there is no control group (cf. Keeler and Steinhorst, 1995; Cavanagh, 2011) or the study asks students to compare their experience with a different course with a different instructor and content in which they are currently enrolled (cf. Sharma et al., 2005).”

“Many students adopt the strategy of massing their study time and cramming just before exams (Michaels and Miethe, 1989; McIntyre and Munson, 2008).”

“…across contexts cannot be assumed, as there is some evidence that the success of classroom interventions depends on the student populations in the classroom (Brownell et al., 2013), instructor classroom management style (Borrego et al., 2013), and the topics being taught (Andrews et al., 2011).”

“…with very different cultural backgrounds and experiences into broad categories such as white, Asian, Native American, and Latin@ (Lee, 2011; Carpenter et al., 2006), but disaggregating students to this level will provide a finer-grained picture of the classroom than has been previously…”

“In addition, although students grouped in the category first generation share some characteristics, they are also very different from one another in terms of culture, background, and the barriers they face in the classroom (Orbe, 2004; Prospero et al., 2012).”

“…our intervention, previous interventions generally are not implemented within an existing course but are either run as separate initiatives or separate courses or are associated with a series of courses (i.e., involved supplemental instruction [SI]; cf. Maton et al., 2000; Matsui et al., 2003).”

“backgrounds that may be at odds with the middle-class cultural norms of universities (e.g., the emphasis on abstract over practical knowledge and independence over interdependence; Stephens et al., 2012; Wilson and Kittleson, 2013).”

“These short-term results may be an underestimate of the effectiveness of the SI programs, as some studies have shown that their effectiveness increases with time (Born et al., 2002).”

“White students, on the other hand, performed just as well, and in some cases better, when allowed to talk through problems (Kim, 2002, 2008).”

“This type of research is being referred to as second-generation education research (Eddy et al., 2013; Freeman et al., 2014) and will help refine and optimize active-learning interventions by identifying the critical elements that make an intervention”

“Positive interpersonal feelings also increased the performance of Mexicans but not European Americans on a learning task (Savani et al., 2013).”

“In these studies, students of different racial/ethnic groups responded differently to the classroom interventions (Etkina et al., 1999; Beichner et al., 2007).”

“When discussing reasons for leaving STEM, many students, particularly students of color and women, describe feelings of isolation and lack of belonging (Hewlett et al., 2008; Cheryan et al., 2009; Strayhorn, 2011).”

“Only a few STEM course–based curricular interventions have disaggregated student performance (physics: Etkina et al., 1999; Hitt et al., 2013; math: Hooker, 2010; physical science: Poelzer and Zeng, 2008).”

“Based on this observation, we endorse recent appeals for researchers to disaggregate data and evaluate how course interventions impact specific subgroups of students (13, 22, 34, 59, 60).”

“Generally, each question on these instruments asked about something different and did not involve extensive use of measures of validity to ensure that researchers were, in fact, measuring what they intended to measure (Armbruster et al., 2009; Rissing and Cogan, 2009; Eddy and Hogan, 2014).”

“Further impetus for active learning has been added by evidence suggesting that active-learning strategies provide more equitable outcomes for underrepresented students in undergraduate biology education (Ballen et al., 2017; Eddy & Hogan, 2014; Haak et al., 2011).”

“In addition, what is known is largely indirect evidence, including self-reported or observational data (Herreid and Schiller, 2012; Eddy and Hogan, 2014; Halverson et al., 2014).”