2021 Virtual Undergraduate Research Symposium
2021 Virtual Undergraduate Research Symposium
Enhancing Core Mathematics with Concepts from Educational Psychology: A Mixed-Method Assessment
Enhancing Core Mathematics with Concepts from Educational Psychology: A Mixed-Method Assessment
PROJECT NUMBER: 3 | AUTHOR: Allison Palmer, Engineering, Design, and Society
MENTOR: Scott Strong, Applied Mathematics and Statistics
ABSTRACT
In undergraduate STEM classrooms and institutions, students are often directed to focus primarily on their cognitive processes and the material at hand, and they are not always guided in how to develop their learning strategies and personal skills. Through research on educational psychology and its application in classrooms, we hope to improve student learning experiences and answer our research question: “How does exposure to concepts from educational psychology affect student outcomes in technical coursework?”. Our research took off in the spring of 2019, funded by the Office of Naval Research. From there, we built our database of gathered knowledge, information, and results until we reached the fall of 2020, where we began working under MURF. Here, using Cornell University’s Systems Evaluation Protocol, we analyzed how our work interacts with stakeholders, formulated possible activities for the most affected stakeholders, and identified ideal short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes for those completing each activity. With this, we have created a self-regulated learning (SRL) activity for students to practice and reflect on. As a pre- and post-activity task, we also created a survey intended to help us assess student attitudes toward the content and their experiences. We hypothesize that practicing the activity and completing the survey will lead students to increase their awareness of their learning, improve their self-regulatory abilities, and develop their lifelong learning capabilities. To assess this, we plan to analyze the results from the activity and survey, measuring the effect that intentional SRL practice can have on attitudes and motivation as well as metacognitive and regulatory capacity. We then plan to use this information to form focus groups of current students that we can track longitudinally, as well as adjust the current materials and create new ones for future cohorts. By moving forward with this research, we aim to continue assessing our hypothesis, further integrating these concepts into STEM environments, and working to improve students’ individual and overall learning experiences and abilities.
PRESENTATION
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Allison Palmer is in her third year at Mines, and she is majoring in engineering with a focus in community development within the Engineering, Design, & Society department. She is also earning a minor in Public Affairs with the McBride Honors Program. Allison has been doing research on educational psychology, its role, and its application in STEM classrooms with Dr. Scott Strong and within the Applied Mathematics & Statistics department for multiple semesters and one summer. Through this experience, she has developed strong passions for the subject area and its components as well as the purpose that the research holds in today’s educational world. In addition to continuing to research the application and reception of these concepts in STEM courses, she would eventually like to look deeper into the brains of STEM students and understand more about their learning processes and mindsets. In the coming years, Allison hopes to either attend graduate school, work with a non-profit organization, or work in STEM education.
Great presentation, Allison! Educational psychology is a very interesting topic and should be considered more, so I think that the idea behind this study is really cool.
Hi Kimberly! Thank you for watching my presentation! I’m so glad that you enjoyed it! If you are interested in learning more about educational psychology and/or our work with Mines students, please don’t hesitate to contact me. As I mentioned in the presentation, we hope that we can find a group of students interested in exploring this material further, so if you are interested, let me know. Thanks again!
Hello Kimberly,
Great presentation! I enjoyed the easy to follow chronological order that you presented your findings in. I do have a question about your self regulation metrics listed later in the slides. Can you elaborate a bit on what the “space” factor means in self conscious learning? Would this have to do with the importance of the environment in which the student is learning in? Thank you for the time.
Hi Jack! I’m glad you liked my presentation, and thank you for your questions. Regarding the “space” factor in learning, it can refer really to any aspect of the space/environment that the person is working/learning in. For example, the source that introduced us to this concept suggested that people assess how listening to music while working can impact their students’ learning [1]. She also stated that, in effective learning, students “create a learning environment that is comfortable yet productive” [1]. When you think about this idea, many pieces of an environment can impact focus and learning capabilities, such as the lighting, temperature, and surrounding items in a room. If you notice that you turn on string lights to create an ambiance, change the thermostat, or put your phone across the room before/during a work session (in the forethought/performance phase of SRL), then you are adjusting your “space”/environment so that you can learn better and be more productive and comfortable. We have probably also noticed this since we started learning online; sitting on my bed with one lamp on during a lecture versus sitting at a desk in a bright classroom can vastly change how focused I am and how well I am grasping the information. I am very sure that there is research out there on how spaces in general impact people, but with our research focusing on learning and education, we are assuming these concepts are at least true for learning and educational environments.
Also, this “space” factor is greatly linked to the other components shown in the presentation (time and emotion [1]). The lighting of an area can relate to the time of day that someone works best, and putting on specific music in the background may impact their emotions while they work and learn. Next time you sit down to a work session (which can be a study session, working on an assignment, learning a new concept, etc.), take notice of your “space ” in the ways discussed above. This may help clear up the term and concept as well.
Thanks again for your questions!
[1] TEDx Talks. Motivation, self-regulation and learning how to learn | Heidi Ashton | TEDxYouth@LBIS. (Dec. 20, 2017). Accessed: 2019. [Online Video]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A64J2eEZ4Os