(C-109) Iteration of Virtual Modules to Enhance Graduate Pedagogy in a High School STEM Program

Introduction:: Graduate students in engineering have few opportunities to learn about curricular and pedagogical concepts as well as put them into practice. Such opportunities to develop teaching mentorship skills would be particularly meaningful for graduate students who are interested in pursuing a teaching-focused career post-graduation. Discovery is a volunteer-based STEM educational initiative in which graduate students create and facilitate open-ended, inquiry-focused BME projects for high school science classes to perform iteratively in the university learning environment. Graduate students are involved in all aspects of the experience and act as either instructor-mentors to secondary school classes or as discipline leads who develop program content and oversee instructor-student interactions. We have previously shown positive impacts of Discovery on graduate student skill development through program engagement and, more recently, through the creation of pedagogy learning modules for volunteers to formally learn pedagogical concepts to implement during interactions with secondary students. While feedback for the pilot modules was generally positive (e.g., appropriate quality and quantity of content, confidence incorporating learning into future teaching), graduate learners identified areas of improvement including flexibility in required time commitment, lack of specificity to the Discovery context, and an overemphasis on theory compared to practical application. Our aim in this work was to improve the pilot pedagogy learning modules and re-evaluate the effectiveness towards improving graduate skill development, especially pertaining to teaching and mentorship.

Materials and Methods:: Virtual training modules created for the online Spring 2022 offering of Discovery were updated based on graduate participant feedback and made available for graduate learners during the in-person Spring 2023 offering, specifically during weeks without in-person activity. The Canvas learning management system was retained for module access and engagement. Each module consisted of an asynchronous pre-recorded webinar and two interaction items (e.g., discussion boards) for collaborative engagement with other Discovery volunteers. One interaction item concentrated on practical Discovery-focused teaching while the other asked for personal and professional reflection related to learners’ own teaching. Modules were centered around relevant topics, such as pedagogy and curriculum development, with the new program adopting an inquiry-based learning approach to model the teaching style expected of graduate mentors. After the program’s conclusion in June 2023, we conducted virtual group structured interviews with 1-3 graduate learners each (n = 19 participants) to assess (i) perceived impact on graduate learner professional development and (ii) perceived utility in improving the educational outcomes of the secondary student stakeholders participating in Discovery. Audio transcripts were recorded and de-identified for analysis. Natural language processing was performed using the Natural Language Toolkit in Python. Data were cleaned, tokenized, and lemmatized before processing to generate keyword frequency distributions, collocations, and overall sentiment. Transcripts were also manually analyzed to identify common themes among participant responses.


Results, Conclusions, and Discussions:: Graduate participants overall had a positive to neutral perception of the provided pedagogical resources, with relatively high module uptake (15/19) and only 4% negative sentiment computed from the sentiment analysis of audio transcripts. Graduate students participating in Discovery were motivated to gain teaching experience and connect with peers, and after program participation, they felt that they successfully reinforced their teaching and communication skills. However, graduate learners generally felt that the training modules overemphasized pedagogical theory and instead preferred a wider range of more practical resources with direct applicability to their roles in Discovery. Additionally, materials were typically only used once, if at all, due to time commitment and the lack of familiarity with the open-ended structure of the module series. Based on graduate student feedback, we will continue to enhance pedagogical resources provided to Discovery graduate instructor-mentors by emphasizing more practical examples, increasing collaboration with mentors, and improving their ease of use. More broadly, a similar approach to educator learning could be applied to contexts outside of Discovery, such as graduate student training for teaching assistantships, pre-service student-teacher practicums, or faculty positions.

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