Transforming �STEM Education

April 2023

Our vision is to ensure the equitable success of diverse STEM learners by catalyzing the convergence of education research and practice. Leveraging emerging open source technologies, we will drive the development, adoption, and evidence-based iterative improvement of inclusive pedagogies and learning environments that inspire and empower every learner to reach their full potential.

Illustrations by Lewis Cattouse

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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Too Many Students Who Start Out as STEM Majors Fail to Complete a Degree

The Problem

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Course DFWI rates in first-year STEM courses by race / ethnicity, 2019*

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60%

100%

40%

80%

0%

20%

DFWI rate

Algebra

Calculus

General

biology

Statistics

General

chemistry

Hispanic or Latino

White

African American

*DFWI (Drop, Fail, Withdraw, Incomplete) data from 36 institutions that includes seven community colleges, two for-profit 4-year institutions, eight nonprofit 4-year institutions, and 19 public 4-year institutions (29 four-year and seven two-year institutions in total) Source: Gardner Institute (2019)

First-year STEM courses are an obstacle for many students, especially those who have been historically marginalized, impacted by poverty and first generation students, who are looking for a clear path to a credential.

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Data analyzed from across 36 public 2/4YR institutions show a disproportionately high DFW (Drop, Fail, Withdraw) rate in various introductory STEM courses, particularly for Black and Latinx students.

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Current solutions are lacking: Learning resources like traditional textbooks can be cost prohibitive to some students. Additionally digital solutions lack rich, interactive and culturally relevant content.

Relevance: Students' lived experiences are not mirrored in the content covered in their science classrooms, making it more difficult to connect with and persist when classes move to more abstract concepts.

Passive approaches to learning: The traditional large-lecture room format which is typical in first year science courses is an ineffective modality for effective learning.

Background knowledge: First year science courses have prior knowledge expectation that high schools might not always expose students to, putting a higher burden on the student to catch up during the course itself.

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For many, if not all students, current approaches to STEM education are falling short.

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Student Experience

The Problem

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Technology aides: Educational technology can support faculty, however overcoming the technology learning curve can take time.

Formative feedback: Effective and timely feedback can support students, however faculty don't always have the tools to deliver personalized and constructive feedback.

Inclusion and belonging: As classrooms become more diverse, science educators are tasked with teaching students with varying prior knowledge, race, ethnicity, gender and socio-economic backgrounds.

Motivating and engaging: Science courses can be demanding and feel irrelevant to students' daily lives. Faculty need to incorporate new pedagogical practices to foster critical thinking and show relevance of concepts being taught

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STEM educators are challenged to deliver blended, active, and adaptive learning.

Faculty Experience

The Problem

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Institutional Experience

Improving Retention and Persistence: Today’s students are more diverse than ever, so institutions need better solutions for delivering scalable and cost-effective differentiated instruction and supports to ensure retention and persistence.

The Problem

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Modernizing Course Design: Effective learning experience design requires leveraging the best of what we know from learning and cognitive science, pedagogical research, and technology to design the highest quality courses that prepare students for STEM degree pathways.

Leveraging Technology to Transform Teaching & Learning: Large class sizes, “lecture-based” instructional delivery, and traditional 15-week term structure can make it difficult for faculty to provide individualized attention and support to students.

Ensuring Effective Faculty Professional Development: Faculty need professional development and support in culturally responsive teaching and inclusive pedagogy to address the unique needs of underrepresented students.

The “one-size-fits-all” instructional model is outdated and ineffective, particularly for minoritized students, and students from low-income backgrounds.

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ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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Lack of product innovation: Current curriculum ed tech is dominated by a few large publishers. The platforms are mature, clunky, and lack innovative product development processes that encourage iterative development and continuous user feedback.

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Proprietary software: Lack of sharing research, product learnings and implementation best practices slows down the pace of innovation and impact student success.

Prioritization: EdTech product developers are incentivized to prioritize what "sells" over what actually works for Black, Indigenous, Latine/x, and poverty-impacted students.

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Siloed process: Product research is siloed from product development, which leads to stagnation. Post-secondary stakeholders are removed from the instructional content development and improvement process due to the private nature of EdTech

Market Experience

The Problem

The higher education market for technology-enabled learning solutions is dominated by a few large publishers leading to high prices, lack of innovation, and inability to do research at scale to understand what works best and for whom.

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ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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Our Solution

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R.E.A.L. STEM Courseware

Relevant, Engaging, Active Learning

Helping students see the relevance of what they are learning, and supporting them in ways that are responsive to their needs and desires.

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R.E.A.L. STEM Courseware

Introductory STEM platform and curriculum for blended and fully online delivery for both matriculated and independent learners–that advance equity by being responsive and relevant to students from diverse backgrounds, using evidence-based design principles to improve student outcomes and success.

• University designed
• Modern curriculum
• Relevance-centered
• Aligned to best OER

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Compelling courseware experience with cinematic video, interactive simulations, authentic visualizations, and a modern, responsive UI to drive student motivation and engagement.

Next--generation data-driven adaptive courseware authoring and delivery platform, instrumented for R&D.

R.E.A.L. STEM

Exemplar digital learning resources on a next-generation open source platform

Our Solution

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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Built on Torus: One Platform, Many Affordances

Torus builds on decades of research findings, embedding learning science principles that best support learners and instructors. Robust feedback loops and actionable insights empower faculty to deliver more effective, personalized learning experiences. Torus accelerates research to continuously improve alignment of content, assessment, and outcomes to support effective learning. Torus extends the groundbreaking work of CMU’s Open Learning Initiative, infused with learning design innovations from ASU’s Center for Education Through Exploration and the Smart Sparrow legacy.

Rich Learning

Data

• Instrumented to collect data about student learning and engagement
• Captures learning data across institutions and diverse student demographics.
• Enables rapid cycle R&D to understand what works and why.

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Our Solution

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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R.E.A.L. Chemistry

Blended Learning Use Case

Integrating and reinforcing relevant pre-class, in-class, and after-class blended learning supports for learners and instructors.

Interleaved courseware component �

• Deeply contextualized application of learning
• Real-world relevant emphasis
• Motivates engagement and provides opportunity to practice and test new knowledge mastery

Applied Activities

Practice

Core content to replace static textbooks

• Active, adaptive content with targeted feedback augmented by “Great Faculty” videos on key topics
• Pedagogy scaffolds and activates prior knowledge

Foundation

Faculty-and-peer supported

synchronous activities

• Evidence-based practices in-class supported by professional development
• Recommendations for faculty informed by platform analytics

Focus

Activities to reinforce and assess learning

• Homework, quizzes and labs to assign between classes
• Test skills and reinforce learning with formative feedback

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Blended Learning Pre-class:

The Foundation

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The Foundation material conveys core concepts, motivating and engaging with best-in-class content, video, and a variety of rich activities that provide thoughtful scaffolding and targeted, adaptive, formative feedback. Students are prepared for more collaborative, focused learning in the classroom.

Pre-Class

Interactive and engaging media spark and sustain motivation.

Learn-by-doing activities provide detailed guiding feedback, scaffolded to support difficult concepts.

An embedded system for discussion, annotation, and collaboration fosters peer-learning.

R.E.A.L. Chemistry

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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In Class

Class activities concentrate on areas in which students are struggling. Instructors are provided Focus activities that help instructors shift from lecture to student-centered active learning, guided by detailed information about student participation and progress in pre-class activities.

Analytics and embedded professional development guide classroom practice.

Instructors are given carefully curated in-class activities, including OER resources. Guidance from DEI experts and experienced instructors helps ensure inclusive and effective classroom integration.

Blended Learning In-Class:

Focused Instruction

R.E.A.L. Chemistry

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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After Class

After class, students solidify their knowledge by using concepts and skills learned pre- and in-class to tackle in progressively challenging questions presented in Practice activities.

Based on prior performance, students are provided similar, but different questions until they reach mastery. An AI “CoPilot” guides students by asking conceptual questions.

Students are given immediate, detailed feedback on questions and prompted to try again.

Blended Learning After-Class:

Practice with Adaptive Support

R.E.A.L. Chemistry

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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Exploration

Explorations offer relevant application and reinforcement of skills, connecting with lived student experience across courseware components.

First, the student chooses a county relevant to them in which to investigate Pb exposure, by analyzing blood samples.

Then they obtain a simulated mass spectrum tied to real data, and determine that a standard is needed to interpret the results.

They use chemistry concepts (e.g., formula weights, unit conversions) to make a standard and test for toxic Pb.

Finally, with the standard, they explore regional lead levels across the US to investigate questions of their choosing.

Chronic exposure to lead (Pb) can cause brain damage in kids, even at low levels. Where is this a problem? To find out, students apply chemistry knowledge and skills to explore real-world data. An AI-powered Chem CoPilot provides motivation, information, and formative feedback.

Introducing: Exploration

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R.E.A.L. Chemistry

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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Timeline &�The Team

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R.E.A.L. Chemistry: Development Timeline & Milestones

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Our Solution

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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Our Partners

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The Team

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Pilot Institutions

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For more information, please contact:

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David Schönstein

david.schonstein@asu.edu

Appendix

Factors Negatively Impacting STEM Student Outcomes

The Problem

Research and conversations with institutional leadership, educators, students, and market experts point to solvable factors that entwine to impact student success in first-year general education STEM courses, particularly for systematically minoritized students, and students from low-income backgrounds:

Faculty

Experience

�Rigid, inflexible, and expensive courseware, that provides little insight into individual student challenges and no support for enhanced active learning and inclusive practices.

Student

Experience

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Overloaded by abstract content that seems irrelevant, taught passively to the 'mythical mean', with poorly designed supports, at high cost-to-value.

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Market

Experience

�Balkanized market of inflexible courseware on proprietary publisher platforms inhibits adoption, increases costs, and limits research effectiveness, hindering innovation and ability to iteratively improve.�

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Institutional

Experience�

Publishers push platforms and one-size-fits-all courseware that limit future institutional flexibility and control, and cannot be iteratively improved to meet the needs of diverse institutions and students.

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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Torus: Make Every Classroom a Learning Laboratory to Rapidly Scale What Works

As an open source platform, Torus supports a broad post-secondary community and accelerates a virtuous learning engineering research cycle that improves outcomes.

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Torus learning engineering research cycle

Our Solution

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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Torus: Addressing Institutional Pain Points

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Our Solution

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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• Develop once, deliver through multiple delivery / learning models.
• Flexible curriculum scope and sequence options.
• R&D across course sections or delivery modalities.
• Data-driven continuous improvement of courses and curricula.

One Platform / Curriculum Solution – Multiple Delivery Options

Our Solution

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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R.E.A.L. Chemistry: 2023-2025 Market Development & Scaling

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Our Solution

ASU-CMU Exemplar Chemistry

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