Author(s):
The Gateway-2-STEM project is working to make active and collaborative learning the default method of instruction in highly enrolled gateway courses and to develop departmental cultures that value evidence-based teaching practices. The project change model combines a bottom-up, or grassroots, approach through individual faculty operating within STEM programs with top-down (university administrative) support. Course-based communities of transformation that include faculty, graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), and learning assistants have worked to design the transformations that they hope to see in introductory sequences in Math, Physics, and Computer Science. We discuss how these efforts have progressed in each discipline and the similarities and differences between them. We describe what we have learned through these efforts (which included the COVID pivot to online and return to in-person) with respect to the importance of faculty communities, course structures, and instructional spaces in transforming teaching practices in these large courses. GTAs also play an important teaching role in these gateway courses and have significant interaction with the students. We have invested significant effort into the preparation of GTAs and have been studying their view of their role in the classroom in order to better understand what they need to be successful. We will present an overview of the key pieces of this effort and the major findings from the associated research.
Coauthors
Jill Nelson, GMU, Fairfax, VA; Jessica Rosenberg, GMU, Fairfax, VA; Mark Snyder, GMU, Fairfax, VA
