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Main POGIL GrantsPOGIL has received new funding from the NSF under grants DUE-0618746, 0618758, and 0618800:The POGIL PROJECT has recently been awarded roughly $2 million through the NSF CCLI Phase 3 program. POGIL is a nationally tested and proven pedagogical strategy that incorporates recent educational research on how students learn. This innovative approach relies on inquiry based, student-centered classrooms and laboratories that enhance learning skills while insuring content mastery. The practices and materials developed are applicable to large or small classrooms, recitation sections with or without technology, and laboratories. The design of the POGIL project takes advantage of known strategies for creating and sustaining curricular change. Project goals include continued faculty development and dissemination of new materials and practices, further adoption of the inquiry approach, assessment of the effectiveness of POGIL on student learning, and research that will lead to the identification of contributions to student conceptual change. With this new award, there are five goals that position THE POGIL PROJECT as a workable model for sustained improvement of STEM undergraduate education. (1) Continue the growth of POGIL implementation throughout the country.The implementation of tested educational innovations is a critical contribution to improving STEM education. POGIL is an exemplary tested innovation that has demonstrated ability to promote widespread adoption. During this project, even greater use of POGIL will stem from the expansion of regional networks and be supported by ongoing faculty development opportunities. (2) Develop and disseminate new materials based on the POGIL philosophy.Systemic improvement of STEM undergraduate education requires coherent curricular materials for multiple courses. To this end, the project will assist with the coordination and dissemination of adaptations of POGIL for diverse settings and support new development in strategic areas. (3) Create structures allowing continued development and dissemination of POGIL into the future.Without intentional support structures, sustained improvement is impossible. The project will create these structures by continuing to develop faculty expertise in targeted areas of the country, establishing and supporting regional connections via workshops and planning sessions to produce self-sustaining regional networks of POGIL practitioners with a national hub. (4) Evaluate student learning related to POGIL with an in-depth methodology.A necessary factor for continued adoption of an educational innovation is evidence of improved student learning. POGIL will capitalize on its successful history of comparative evaluation to develop and utilize new finely-tuned assessments of student learning. The new instruments will measure skills for lifelong learning as well as more traditional content goals. (5) Investigate how students undergo a conceptual change in their understanding of chemistry in the context of POGIL.Basic research on undergraduate STEM teaching and learning is the engine that drives curricular reform. POGIL has always been a research-based educational innovation. The project will contribute to this research base by describing how conceptual change occurs in a POGIL setting, providing insight not only into the nature of conceptual change but also into critical features for effective implementation that will feed the project's development and dissemination efforts. A national interconnected network of instructors trained in the inquiry methods necessary to increase the rate of dissemination and adoption has been created through the previous work of the POGIL Project, and will be expanded over the four years of this new award. These instructors, proficient in new pedagogical techniques, will have the skills needed to instruct others in student-centered instruction and in the development of effective guided inquiry materials and practices. New student-centered materials will be developed by this expanding core of practitioners in areas for which no POGIL materials currently exist. POGIL is an innovative, functioning, on-going pedagogic approach supported by curricular materials widely in use at several levels (including high school and college) in different courses, disciplines, and settings across the country. Due to this unique situation, and because of the nature of POGIL (student-centered, cooperative learning) instruction, an unparalleled opportunity exists for meaningful research on how to create conditions for enhanced student development of critical thinking skills and improved conceptual understanding. The production of this new knowledge about student learning will have applicability to all instructional settings. Additional POGIL-Related Grants
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