S6B Employing and Evaluating DEI Interventions in STEM Gateway courses

Presenters

Kim Quillin, Biological Sciences

Abstract

The institutional bias against underrepresented minorities in undergraduate STEM education is well documented, especially in gateway courses. What kind of interventions should we employ in our STEM gateway courses at SU to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)? What evidence can we use to evaluate the success of these interventions?
In this talk I will share the conceptual framework and preliminary results from my 2021-2022 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Fellowship focused on the implementation and evaluation of DEI strategies in Biology 202: Introduction to Biology: Evolution and Ecology, one of the two new biology gateway courses that launched during Fall 2021. First, I will share my framework of the pedagogical strategies that have been shown to reduce opportunity/equity gaps in STEM courses and show examples of how I implemented many of these strategies in Biology 202. These strategies fit into two major interrelated categories: 1) course structure, and 2) course culture. Second, I will share examples of strategies used to solicit feedback from students to evaluate course structure and culture. These evaluation strategies are analyzed in four dimensions according to their ability to help instructors: 1) relate to students as individuals, 2) redirect instruction, and 3) sustain evaluation as an integral part of the fabric of the course, and 4) integrate evaluation with student metacognitive training.
Participants will be invited to share DEI interventions and strategies for evaluation that are missing from the presentation to help hone a resource that can be shared out to anyone interested, whether in STEM or beyond. The goal of this collaboration is to facilitate the implementation of DEI strategies in our courses and to improve our ability to tap into the experiences and perspectives of diverse students in an ongoing, sustainable basis.

Session Recording