Improving student outcomes in math through online faculty professional development

Chris S. Hulleman; Dustin B. Thoman

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Faculty Development Division (FDD) Technical Session 9
Tagged Division: Faculty Development Division (FDD)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47594

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Paper Authors

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Chris S. Hulleman University of Virginia

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Chris S. Hulleman is a professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia. He is also the founder and director of the Motivate Lab, which collaborates with educational practitioners to help ameliorate systemic racism and inequality. His team develops and tests changes in educational practice that support the motivation of students from historically marginalized backgrounds in education. He received his BA from Central College (Iowa) in 1993 and his PhD in social and personality psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2007. Prior to his career in psychology, he spent six years as a teacher, coach, and social worker. Chris is a second generation educator whose grandparents were tenant farmers in Iowa and Nebraska. He tries to emulate their hard work and persistence in the pursuit of social justice. One of his favorite childhood memories is eating his paternal grandmother’s homemade fruit pies with plenty of ice cream.

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Dustin B. Thoman San Diego State University

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Dr. Dustin Thoman is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education at San Diego State University. He also serves as California Research Director for Motivate Lab. His scholarship is grounded in social psychology, diversity science, and a social contextual framework of motivation. He studies how motivation can be supported or disrupted by the social and cultural contexts in which interests are sparked, developed, and ultimately become (or not) lifelong pursuits. He and his team utilize insights from motivation science to identify and remove institutional and social-contextual barriers that impede the development of educational and career interests for students from marginalized and historically underrepresented backgrounds. Improving equity and inclusion is at the heart of his team's research and translational work to support research on equity and inclusion in STEM education.

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Abstract

Low student success rates in lower division math courses represent one of the most common and critical barriers to college graduation rates across the United States (Meiselman & Schudde, 2022). The causes of this problem are multifaceted and vary across institutions, but it is evident from a wide range of national reports that math instructors often are not provided the training or resources necessary to best support student learning (e.g., Henderson et al., 2011).

To help address this concern, our team of motivation researchers and curriculum designers created the Motivating Learning Course. The course is an online, hands-on professional learning course that equips faculty to kick off their courses with empirically based motivationally supportive tools and language designed to help instructors create student-centered learning environments. Participants learn how to create messages and learning materials that support students to develop adaptive beliefs about learning and school. In particular, participants learn about three key learning mindsets— students’ beliefs about themselves and the learning context (e.g., Growth Mindset, Purpose and Relevance, and Sense of Belonging)—and workshop strategies for leveraging these mindsets in equity-supportive ways while being customized to their own courses, teaching methods, and styles of communication.

We delivered the Motivating Learners Course to a cohort of math faculty from a single department at a large state university in California during the 2022-2023 academic year. We evaluated the effectiveness of the course using institutional data from 60 math instructors, including 25 who participated in the course and a group of 35 control instructors teaching similar courses in the same department who did not participate in the Motivating Learners Course, and 3,118 students enrolled in these instructors’ courses.

We compared student outcomes data, including grades and pass rates, for students whose instructors participated in the Motivating Learners Course to those whose instructors did not. Results indicate that, overall, students taught by instructors who participated in the course earned significantly higher grades (M = 2.33, SD = 1.29, n = 1124) than those whose instructors did not (M = 2.19, SD = 1. 32, n = 1994), t (2820) = 2.87, p = .004, d = 0.11. Further, students with instructors who participated in the course (68.9%) had higher pass rates than those whose instructors did not (64.9%). This pattern of findings remained even after controlling for students’ cumulative GPA prior to beginning the target math class, as well as URM status and Pell grant recipient status. Follow-up analyses indicate that although comparisons across groups were not statistically different, students from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds and students who are Pell grant recipients tended to benefit the most from taking math courses from instructors who participated in the MLC.

These findings suggest that a brief, intensive, online professional development course for mathematics faculty can have downstream effects on student learning outcomes. Future research is needed to document changes to instructor’s knowledge, attitudes, and instructional practices as a result of taking the course, and how these changes impacted student learning outcomes.

Citation
Format

Hulleman, C. S., & Thoman, D. B. (2024, June), Improving student outcomes in math through online faculty professional development Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47594

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Low student success rates in lower division math courses represent one of the most common and critical barriers to college graduation rates across the United States (Meiselman &amp;amp; Schudde, 2022). The causes of this problem are multifaceted and vary across institutions, but it is evident from a wide range of national reports that math instructors often are not provided the training or resources necessary to best support student learning (e.g., Henderson et al., 2011). 

To help address this concern, our team of motivation researchers and curriculum designers created the Motivating Learning Course. The course is an online, hands-on professional learning course that equips faculty to kick off their courses with empirically based motivationally supportive tools and language designed to help instructors create student-centered learning environments. Participants learn how to create messages and learning materials that support students to develop adaptive beliefs about learning and school. In particular, participants learn about three key learning mindsets— students’ beliefs about themselves and the learning context (e.g., Growth Mindset, Purpose and Relevance, and Sense of Belonging)—and workshop strategies for leveraging these mindsets in equity-supportive ways while being customized to their own courses, teaching methods, and styles of communication. 

We delivered the Motivating Learners Course to a cohort of math faculty from a single department at a large state university in California during the 2022-2023 academic year.  We evaluated the effectiveness of the course using institutional data from 60 math instructors, including 25 who participated in the course and a group of 35 control instructors teaching similar courses in the same department who did not participate in the Motivating Learners Course, and 3,118 students enrolled in these instructors’ courses.  

We compared student outcomes data, including grades and pass rates, for students whose instructors participated in the Motivating Learners Course to those whose instructors did not. Results indicate that, overall, students taught by instructors who participated in the course earned significantly higher grades (M = 2.33, SD = 1.29, n = 1124) than those whose instructors did not (M = 2.19, SD = 1. 32, n = 1994), t (2820) = 2.87, p = .004, d = 0.11. Further, students with instructors who participated in the course (68.9%) had higher pass rates than those whose instructors did not (64.9%). This pattern of findings remained even after controlling for students’ cumulative GPA prior to beginning the target math class, as well as URM status and Pell grant recipient status. Follow-up analyses indicate that although comparisons across groups were not statistically different, students from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds and students who are Pell grant recipients tended to benefit the most from taking math courses from instructors who participated in the MLC.

These findings suggest that a brief, intensive, online professional development course for mathematics faculty can have downstream effects on student learning outcomes. Future research is needed to document changes to instructor’s knowledge, attitudes, and instructional practices as a result of taking the course, and how these changes impacted student learning outcomes.
AU  - Chris S. Hulleman
AU  - Dustin B.  Thoman
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Improving student outcomes in math through online faculty professional development
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/47594
ER  -