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Meeting the Conditions for Diffusion of Teaching Innovations in a University STEM Department

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Abstract

Recommendations to improve university Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education often emphasize the role of classroom assessment in supporting student learning. Despite extensive efforts to support instructors in reforming their practices, many continue to teach didactically with limited classroom assessment. Instructors’ decisions to adopt new practices have previously been characterized with the innovation decision model, and the spread of such practices can be explored through an innovation diffusion lens. Innovation diffusion of high-impact assessment practices requires interaction between experienced assessment users and less-experienced users. Within a university STEM department, instructors’ assessment experiences were documented through the Faculty Self-Reported Assessment Survey (FRAS), and interactions between instructors were characterized with social network analysis. Results show that instructors with higher self-reported assessment experience had more teaching-specific peer interactions within the department, and that instructors of all assessment experience levels interacted more often with more experienced instructors. This study demonstrates and characterizes the conditions for innovation diffusion in a university STEM department and highlights the potential role of peer interactions for supporting the spread of innovative teaching ideas.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the instructors within the department studied for their participation in the surveys. We also thank Caitlin Anderson, Jeffrey Boyer, Brian Farlow, Jennifer Momsen, Tammi Neville Rebecca Reichenbach, Rachel Salter, Tara Slominski, and Kurt Williams for thoughtful conversations and helpful comments on earlier versions of the article, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments that substantially improved the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported in part by a research fellowship awarded by the North Dakota State University Graduate School for the STEM Education graduate program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, 58108, USA

    Melody McConnell & Lisa Montplaisir

  2. School of Molecular Biosciences, Washington State University, Pullman, 99164, WA, USA

    Erika Offerdahl

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  1. Melody McConnell
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  2. Lisa Montplaisir
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Correspondence to Melody McConnell.

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Supplemental Figure 1.

Practices scores of participants over time. The black lines represent the five instructors (two highs, one mid, and two lows) discussed within the text who demonstrated relatively clear, sustained change in Practices score over time, while the grey lines in the background represent the other participants. (JPG 157 kb)

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McConnell, M., Montplaisir, L. & Offerdahl, E. Meeting the Conditions for Diffusion of Teaching Innovations in a University STEM Department. Journal for STEM Educ Res 3, 43–68 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41979-019-00023-w

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