2022-2023 Grants

How teacher-student connection improves abstract thinking

Principal Investigator: Tugce Bilgin, Lecturer, Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
Award Date: Summer 2022
Status: Completed, manuscript submitted

Summary

The ‘social breathing’ and ‘interactive brain’ hypotheses as well as models of learning dynamics, joint action, and teacher-student interactions posit that low-level perceiving and signaling systems in nonverbal behavior scaffold and support interpersonal coordination and performance in joint tasks, such as teaching and learning. This study attempts to quantify this relationship. Teacher-student dyads recruited from various sections of the Columbia College Core course 'Frontiers of Science' will use a 1-on-1 online portal to collaboratively complete simple and complex tasks. We will examine the relationships between nonverbal behavior, task complexity and performance, and dyad familiarity (i.e., whether or not the student and instructor were drawn from the same section.) 

Neuro-DBER: A flexible neuroscience- and technology-driven framework for Discipline-Based Education Research

Summary

What predicts student success? The classroom is a dynamic setting where students and instructors of diverse backgrounds exchange ideas in the pursuit of learning. Many variables complicate this collaborative paradigm: composition changes due to student absence; content difficulty increases as the course deepens; student fatigue accumulates as the semester progresses. While the relative contribution of complicating variables has been studied in isolation, a comprehensive understanding of their synergistic effects remains elusive. What can be done to help instructors and students integrate solutions to these well-known challenges into a cohesive framework? This project aims to develop a flexible neuroscience and technology-driven framework for Discipline-Based Education Research (Neuro-DBER) to revolutionize teaching and learning in the classroom. Our system merges cognitive neuroscienceeducationand innovative technology to enable investigations of the relationships between subjective experience, body language, , real-time learning, and neural measures of in-class activities. Neuro-DBER is a flexible technological framework suitable to any field of study to address critical questions about classroom experiences, such as the gap between a student's subjective feelings versus actual learning measured. Featuring integration of advanced research technology, our framework facilitates thoughtful design of in-class activities that will thereby transform the way we teach and learn, yielding an inclusive environment conducive to effective teaching and addressing students’ distinctive needs.

Principal Investigator:  Alfredo Spagna, Lecturer, Psychology
Co-Sponsor: CUIT Emerging Technology Research Grant
Award Date: Summer 2022
Status: Ongoing, manuscript submitted

Increasing student engagement with course content and learning supports through mixed-methods mapping of motivation and learning behaviors

Principal Investigator: Samantha Garbers, Associate Professor, Population and Family Health 
Award Date: Summer 2022
Status: Ongoing, manuscript submitted

Summary

This project aims to conceptualize, quantify, and explore qualitatively student engagement and motivations in an interdisciplinary biostatistics and epidemiology Core course. At the Mailman School of Public Health, all incoming students spend their first semester participating in an interdisciplinary Core curriculum. The most challenging course in the curriculum, Research Methods & Application - Quantitative Data Analysis, is taught in a hybrid format with synchronous and asynchronous content. Student supports have been deployed in recent years, but some students continue to face challenges in successful completion of this course. As revealed by our prior SOLER-funded project – a randomized trial of behavioral nudges – student engagement with Core course content is low and varies substantially by week; most troublingly, engagement with learning supports for task management declined steadily over the course of the semester. Academic engagement is a critical construct known to improve course persistence, predict student success (including grades, degree completion), educational attainment, and occupational attainment. Interventions are needed to increase student engagement across the board, for all students, but particularly for students whose baseline assessments indicate the need for academic support. These interventions should aim to increase student engagement with both course content and task management learning supports. Intervention strategies should be tailored to students’ academic needs, baseline competencies, and informed by evidence on how students of varying baseline competency levels engage with these course elements. More nuanced data on how students of different competency levels engage with course elements – including qualitative data on student motivations for engagement – are needed to guide the development and deployment of interventions that can be tested using rigorous designs. In Phase 1, we will replicate student engagement analyses using learning management system learning analytics data for the 2021 course, stratifying by baseline competency level. In Phase 2, we will use rigorous qualitative methods as one-on-one interviews to explore student learning behaviors and motivations that underlie engagement. Our prior study did not demonstrate efficacy of behavioral nudges most likely because the nudges, though evidence-based, were not informed by data on what motivates students. In the final phase of the project, we will quantitatively explore student perspectives of motivating behavioral nudges using forced-choice paired comparison methods that assess preferences across a range of dimensions, including messaging, placement/delivery, timing, and design. This proposed work is an essential step before deploying a larger-scale trial testing nudge interventions with more complex features, such as tailored nudges based on baseline characteristics.

An exploration of the anti-oppressive practice of 'un-grading' and its effects on student learning

Summary

A significant challenge facing instructors at Columbia School of Social Work is the fair, equitable, and accurate assessment of students. Instructors use letter grades to evaluate student outcomes, but there is little agreement as to what grades indicate. There is, however, a shared implicit assumption that grades measure learning. The current study interrogates that assumption by exploring the implementation of an "ungrading" pedagogy in a Program Evaluation course. Ungrading is an innovative practice in which students receive feedback on assignments and revise their work based on that feedback; however, their work is not graded. Rather, the student is asked to reflect on what they learned and on the process of learning (their motivation, effort, curiosity), and then give themselves a grade on the assignment. Anecdotal evidence suggests that ungrading fosters learning because students focus on the process of learning instead of the outcome of a grade. This study aims to examine objective and subjective student experiences with ungrading relative to traditional alternatives.   

Principal Investigator: Amy Werman, Lecturer, Social Work 
Award Date: Summer 2022
Status: Completed

Evaluating augmented reality (AR) using Microsoft Mesh and Hololens 2 for teaching deep expertise in introductory biochemistry

Principal Investigator:  Brent Stockwell, Professor, Biological Sciences
Co-Sponsor: CUIT Emerging Technology Research Grant
Award Date: Summer 2022
Status: Deferred to 2023-2024

Summary

Learning biochemistry is challenging for students using chalkboards, PowerPoint or Zoom, due to 3D aspects of molecular conformations. AR/VR offer a solution—they can be more immersive and enhance attention due to the lack of distractions, and allow engagement with 3D objects, such as proteins, that cannot be directly experienced in the real world. We previously performed studies with support from the Provost’s Office and from SOLER using VR to teach biochemistry using Oculus Quest 1 headsets and Spatial.io, meeting with students to discuss 3D aspects of biochemistry, and Quest 2 headsets with the online platform Glue. We found that using VR was impactful in terms of engagement and learning improvements. We found that many students are highly engaged during the in- person experience as well as the VR experience, but that rendering detailed proteins and their motions is challenging with the limited processing power of the Quest 2 headsets. Most critically, we found that students need to be able to translate the insights from interacting with 3D models of proteins back to representing proteins in two dimensions in order to build on their knowledge with subsequent reading of papers, textbooks, and other 2D representations of 3D molecules. This translation from 3D back to 2D is difficult to do in VR because it is difficult to simultaneously view 3D and 2D representations of molecules with high fidelity. We hypothesize that Augmented Reality (AR) will provide the missing link in translating deep insights into the 3D structure-function relationship in protein molecules into 2D representations of these molecules that can be used outside of the AR/VR format.

Interactive simulations to support inquiry-based statistics instruction in Frontiers of Science

Summary

Frontiers of Science is a required course for all first-year Columbia College students. The goal of the course is to provide an introduction to current research across four different scientific disciplines while helping students develop a framework for approaching, analyzing, and interpreting quantitative information (hereafter referred to as the scientific "habits of mind"). Students come to Frontiers of Science with a wide range of prior science coursework and attitudes/interests/experiences in science. Therefore, a central challenge in planning individual seminar sessions is identifying learning activities that address course objectives while serving the learning needs of all students in the classroom. This challenge can be particularly acute when introducing statistical concepts. Frontiers of Science students are introduced to basic statistical concepts (e.g., measures of central tendency and dispersion) at the start of the semester. During the first three weeks of the semester, students are expected to develop an understanding of how  these concepts can be used to formulate statistically supported inferences (e.g., the use of standard error to evaluate confidence intervals and to support hypothesis tests). However, based on an introductory survey completed by students in seminar sections during the spring 2022 semester, only 50 percent of students reported having completed previous coursework in statistics. Therefore, there is a clear need within Frontiers of Science for instructional tools that are appropriate and challenging for students both with and without prior experience in statistics. We will develop a series of interactive simulations to support inquiry-based learning of basic statistical concepts in Frontiers of Science seminar sessions. We additionally propose to work with SOLER Initiative faculty to investigate the impact of the proposed instructional materials on learning outcomes in Frontiers of Science seminar sections. Because all incoming first-year students enroll in Frontiers of Science, student interactions with these simulations will impact learning outcomes across Columbia College. Moreover, because the statistical concepts to be introduced are foundational to data analysis across many different fields of study, these simulations will be of use to faculty across the  university; for example, the simulations may be adapted to introduce Earth Science students to statistical analysis of environmental data. The simulations will additionally expand upon interactive simulations previously developed by faculty in the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) as part of the Stats Interactives website.

Access the project proposal here.

Principal Investigator: Nicholas Bock, Lecturer, Earth & Environmental Sciences
Co-Sponsor: Innovative Course Module Design Grant (CTL)
Award Date: Summer 2022
Status: Completed