I have been involved internationally and nationally in initiatives to effectively translate discipline-based research to the practice of teaching, thus increasing the impact of this research and improving undergraduate STEM education. I have been involved in multiple interdisciplinary research projects, including the ELIPSS Project (www.elipss.com), which is developing resources for STEM instructors to assess transferable skills in the classroom as well as for a campus initiative to increase evidence-based instructional practices across campus. I was also one of the PIs for the Increase the Impact Project (www.increasetheimpact.com), which developed resources for PIs to improve the propagation of their innovations. I have also worked on institutional projects to assess the organizational climate for promoting and sustaining innovative teaching and learning practices in STEM departments and helped create a process to iteratively increase the use of evidence-based scientific teaching and learning practices in STEM classes across campus. Tell us about the broad impact it has/could have. My research in discourse analysis has led to insights in understanding how to effectively design and facilitate active learning in STEM classrooms, as well as identifying effective strategies for faculty development to assist instructors in implementing these materials and techniques. Much of this work has involved collaborative projects to extend the scope of the work and increase the impact in transforming undergraduate education. This work has also been instrumental in expanding qualitative research methods in chemistry education research. Given my focus on increasing the impact of educational innovations, a key outcome of my different research projects has been the development of resources for use by the broader community. In particular, our work on the ELIPSS (Enhancing Learning by Improving Process Skills in STEM) project has resulted in the development of resources that can be readily adopted by instructors to assess student skills in a wide range of classrooms and across STEM disciplines. These efforts support the increasing emphasis on helping students develop scientific practices and other transferable skills. In addition to publications describing our work and providing resources for instructors, I have facilitated workshops across the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain to support educators in engaging students in meaningful learning. The most significant impact of my work in increasing the impact of educational innovations has been in shifting the paradigm in educational projects from an emphasis on dissemination to an emphasis on propagation to increase the degree to which evidence-based educational materials and
RENÉE COLE MEET THE RESEARCHER PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY
What is the focus of your work? My research focuses on issues related to how students learn chemistry and how those results can be used to transform the design of instructional materials and teaching strategies to improve student learning. The increased adoption of active learning strategies to teach chemistry at the undergraduate level provides a unique opportunity to investigate how students develop understanding of concepts in chemistry and the nature of the learning environment that supports (or constrains) this development. We focus on the shifts of knowledge among individuals, small groups, and the whole class community, and hence on the relationship between knowledge constructed by individuals and the collective activity of the classroom community. This work includes characterizing the essential features of effective task design and implementation that foster productive engagement of diverse students in discourse practices known to promote meaningful learning in different active learning environments.
28 I College of Liberal Arts and Sciences • clas.uiowa.edu
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog