“They Have Shown Me It Is Possible to Thrive within STEM”: Incorporating Learning Assistants in General Chemistry Enhances Student Belonging and Confidence

Clements, Katherine A.; Zepeda, Cristina D.; Leich Hilbun, Allison; Todd, Tara; Clements, Thomas P.; Johnson, Heather J.; Watkins, Jessica; Friedman, Katherine L.; Brame, Cynthia J.

doi:10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c01224

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…In the in-person environment, appraisal support from LAs influenced Buy-In and, through Buy-In, student deep engagement. The impact of appraisal support from LAs aligns with student reports of their experiences with LAs during groupwork . In in-person chemistry classrooms, students felt LAs created a positive environment where they could ask questions without worrying about looking wrong and generally increased opportunities for feedback.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…These benefits on more conceptual and higher-order assessments suggest that students in courses with LAs are engaging with the course material for understanding rather than just memorization. LAs also promote positive student attitudes about learning and students’ sense of belonging in STEM. , In chemistry courses specifically, the presence of LAs increases students’ satisfaction with their course and its content . Deep engagement is more likely to occur when there is intrinsic motivation, and one component of intrinsic motivation is the positive affect toward something .…”

Section: Learning Assistant (La) Model Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning Assistants and Instructors Provide Social Support That Influences Student Engagement Differently in Undergraduate Active Learning Chemistry Courses

Donis,

Aikens,

Swamy

et al. 2024

J. Chem. Educ.

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Active learning commonly involves students engaging with course material in small groups during class time. The quality of this engagement may be key for students to reap the benefits of active learning. Social support theory suggests that supports from key classroom personnel like instructors and learning assistants (LAs) could positively influence student engagement in in-class activities. We explored the influence of social support across multiple sections of general chemistry courses taught in two modalities: in-person and remote synchronous. We found that students perceived that LAs and instructors both provide high levels of support for active learning in general chemistry courses. However, the influence of support on engagement varied by both who was providing it and the type of support being provided. Instructors' provisioning of informational support significantly affected student engagement in active learning regardless of course context (in-person and remote synchronous). In contrast, LAs provisioning of appraisal and emotional support impacted student engagement, though the importance of each of these supports from LAs depended on course context. Overall, we found social support can influence student in-class engagement and course context greatly influenced the relationship between the provided social support and student engagement.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Learning Assistant (La) Model Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Assistants and Instructors Provide Social Support That Influences Student Engagement Differently in Undergraduate Active Learning Chemistry Courses

Donis,

Aikens,

Swamy

et al. 2024

J. Chem. Educ.

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Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education: The Learning Assistant Model and Student Retention and Graduation Rates

Feng,

Close,

Luxford

et al. 2024

Res High Educ

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Background Evidence-based and student-centered instructional methods hold the promise of transforming undergraduate STEM education and simultaneously solving the dual challenge of STEM workforce needs and inequities within STEM. The Learning Assistant (LA) Model was created to reform curriculum, recruit teachers, and inform discipline-based education research. Numerous studies have shown positive impacts on students and Learning Assistants (LAs) in terms of retention and pass rates, learning outcomes, attitudinal shifts, and emotional support. Several studies have explored demographic differences and found that LAs help close the gap in retention rates for women and first-generation students. While short-term effects have been well documented, the long-term effects on students’ college retention and completion rates have not been widely studied. We gathered information about LA-adopting institutions identified on the Learning Assistant Alliance website and from individual higher education institutions’ websites. Combining this information with the College Scorecard Database for four-year U.S. institutions allows us to examine student retention and graduation rates after these institutions have adopted the LA model and look for differences in both the student and university characteristics included in the dataset. We are interested in determining if there is a difference between LA-adopting and non-LA-adopting institutions in terms of their student outcomes. Results These LA-adopting institutions have larger enrollments and are more likely to award graduate degrees. Students in LA-adopting institutions are more likely to be younger with lower percentages of females, first generation, and Black students. No significant differences in the percentages of Hispanic students or in the average costs per student were observed in our study. Using regression analysis, we find LA-adopting institutions have significantly higher retention and completion rates. Conclusions Since LA-adopting institutions have different characteristics than non-LA institutions, these differences should be considered in future studies examining the impact of the LA model. After controlling for these differences in our study, we find that institutions with the LA model have 4 to 15 percentage points higher college completion rate and they have better outcomes for Hispanic and Black students. These findings suggest that increasing the adoption of the LA model may contribute to reducing inequity in STEM.

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Expansive learning in the learning assistant model: how instructors’ goals lead to differences in implementation and development of LAs’ practices

Karch,

Mashhour,

Koss

et al. 2024

IJ STEM Ed

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Background The learning assistant (LA) model supports student success in undergraduate science courses; however, variation in outcomes has led to a call for more work investigating how the LA model is implemented. In this research, we used cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to characterize how three different instructors set up LA-facilitated classrooms and how LAs’ understanding and development of their practices was shaped by the classroom activity. CHAT is a sociocultural framework that provides a structured approach to studying complex activity systems directed toward specific objects. It conceptualizes change within these systems as expansive learning, in which experiencing a contradiction leads to internalization and critical self-reflection, and then externalization and a search for solutions and change. Results Through analyzing two semi-structured retrospective interviews from three professors and eleven LAs, we found that how the LA model was implemented differed based on STEM instructors’ pedagogical practices and goals. Each instructor leveraged LA-facilitated interactions to further learning and tasked LAs with emotionally supporting students to grapple with content and confusions in a safe environment; however, all three had different rules and divisions of labor that were influenced by their perspectives on learning and their objects for the class. For LAs, we found that they had multiple, sometimes conflicting, motives that can be described as either practical, what they described as their day-to-day job, or sense-making, how they made sense of the reason for their work. How these motives were integrated/separated or aligned/misaligned with the collective course object influenced LAs’ learning in practice through either a mechanism of consonance or contradiction. We found that each LA developed unique practices that reciprocally shaped and were shaped by the activity system in which they worked. Conclusions This study helps bridge the bodies of research that focus on outcomes from the LA model and LA learning and development by describing how LA learning mechanisms are shaped by their context. We also show that variation in the LA model can be described both by classroom objects and by LAs’ development in dialogue with those objects. This work can be used to start to develop a deeper understanding of how students, instructors, and LAs experience the LA model.

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“They Have Shown Me It Is Possible to Thrive within STEM”: Incorporating Learning Assistants in General Chemistry Enhances Student Belonging and Confidence

Cited by 6 publications

References 49 publications

Learning Assistants and Instructors Provide Social Support That Influences Student Engagement Differently in Undergraduate Active Learning Chemistry Courses

Learning Assistants and Instructors Provide Social Support That Influences Student Engagement Differently in Undergraduate Active Learning Chemistry Courses

Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education: The Learning Assistant Model and Student Retention and Graduation Rates

Expansive learning in the learning assistant model: how instructors’ goals lead to differences in implementation and development of LAs’ practices

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