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Feeling a sense of belonging in a learning environment can have positive effects on student success. The impact of this psychosocial variable on undergraduates' achievement and retention has been demonstrated in STEM disciplines, especially for women within physical sciences where large disparities in gender representation persist. The current study explores the relationship between belonging and student success in undergraduate chemistry, where greater gender parity has recently emerged. In particular, this research investigates the belonging of first-year students enrolled in a two-semester General Chemistry course sequence. The study begins by examining whether students' early sense of belonging in the course, indexed by two survey measures (perceived belonging, belonging uncertainty) varies depending on their demographics and academic preparation. The belonging measures are then used as predictors of performance in General Chemistry 1 and 2 and attrition from one semester to the next. Paralleling research in other STEM disciplines, the results show that female students, especially those from underrepresented minority groups, reported lower belonging and higher uncertainty than male students within the first weeks of the course. After accounting for demographics, preparation, and participation in a course supplemental program, the belonging measures predicted performance and attrition for all students. These findings suggest that course-level belonging in General Chemistry can have practical consequences for student success, and early disparities in belonging may have downstream effects on the retention of women and other groups underrepresented in STEM. Strategies for creating an inclusive and engaging environment that supports the success of all students are discussed.

The Inclusive Environments and Metrics in Biology Education and Research (iEMBER) network is a newly forming national community of practice that engages diversity, equity, and inclusion stakeholders in interdisciplinary collaborative projects. iEMBER was initiated with incubator funding from the National Science Foundation program for Research Coordination Networks in Undergraduate Biology Education. In June 2017, biology education researchers, social scientists, biologists, and program and policy administrators, all with interests in diversity, equity, and inclusion, met to lay the foundation for the iEMBER network. iEMBER provides a distinct forum to coordinate efforts through networking, professional development, and the initiation of collaborative research. iEMBER advances science, technology, engineering, and mathematics reform focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion through the initiation of research teams at the iEMBER biennial conference and outreach efforts at discipline-specific meetings and conferences. The focus of iEMBER is on understanding how to create inclusive, supportive, and engaging environments to foster the success of all biology students and trainees. This report focuses on the structure of the iEMBER network, two takeaways that emerged from the 2017 conference (interdisciplinary networking/collaboration and intradisciplinary broadening participation strategies), and ways for prospective members to engage in ongoing dialogue and future events. Learn more at http://iember.org.

It has been argued that humor is beneficial in the classroom because it increases social bonding between instructor and student, salience of information, and ultimately recall and retention. The current study sought to add to the literature by empirically testing some assumptions about humor as a pedagogical tool. Specifically, we predicted that using humor in a classroom setting would enhance learning on the first three levels of Bloom's taxonomy (i.e. knowledge, comprehension, and application). Results indicated that using humor to teach material significantly increased students' overall performance on exams, particularly on knowledge and comprehension level quiz items, but not application level items. Moreover, learning a construct through the use of humor was most effective for comprehension level quiz items. This study provides some of the first ecologically valid evidence that humor may maximize learning outcomes in college classrooms. (Contains 1 table.)

The current study sought to examine the effectiveness of four teaching techniques (lecture, demonstrations, discussions, and in-class activities) in the classroom. As each technique offers different benefits to the instructor and students, each technique was expected to aid in a different depth of learning. The current findings indicated that each teaching technique has its own unique benefits and is effective for various levels of learning. Additionally, our findings supported the notion that active techniques do aid in increasing learning. In-class activities led to higher overall scores than any other teaching method while lecture methods led to the lowest overall scores of any of the teaching methods. The implications for the classroom are discussed.

A unit operations laboratory course was significantly modified to be an open-ended problem-based experience with an emphasis on teamwork and communication skills. Students were surveyed to assess gains in engineering self-efficacy as well as to indicate which course structure components were most beneficial to learning. Students showed significant gains in communication and design self-efficacy. Lectures were rated unimportant, while lab reports, oral presentations, teamwork, and open-ended problems were rated as highly important for learning.

Robust evidence shows that Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) improves the academic success of first-year college students in introductory Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses. Less clear is the extent to which this positive PLTL effect varies across different subgroups of the population. The current study aims to deepen our understanding of the overall PLTL effect by extensively evaluating an optional PLTL program associated with General Chemistry I at a private, research university. Using five years of exam data, this study disaggregates the PLTL effect by demographics (sex and race), academic preparation (math skills, chemistry content knowledge, and experience with college-preparatory coursework), and participation in another curricular innovation (a growth-mindset intervention). Results revealed that the positive effect of PLTL was comparable across demographic identity groups. Thus, the PLTL program benefitted all participants but did not reduce the pre-existing performance disparity between underrepresented minority and white students (no sex-based disparity was observed). In terms of academic preparation, the PLTL effect interacted with students' level of experience with college-preparatory coursework but not with their math or chemistry knowledge. This pattern suggests that PLTL may help develop students' self-management or reasoning skills, without necessarily narrowing knowledge gaps. Finally, PLTL interacted with participation in a growth-mindset intervention: the difference between PLTL participants and nonparticipants was smaller among students who received the mindset intervention. Implications for chemical education researchers and practitioners are discussed, with an eye toward fostering equity in introductory STEM courses.

Active learning with clickers is a common approach in high-enrollment, lecture-based courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In this study, we describe the procedures that faculty at one institution used when implementing clicker-based active learning, and how they situated these activities in their class sessions. Using a mixed-methods approach, we categorized faculty into four implementation styles based on quantitative observation data and conducted qualitative interviews to further understand why faculty used these styles. We found that faculty tended to use similar procedures when implementing a clicker activity, but differed on how they situated the clicker-based active learning into their courses. These variations were attributed to different faculty goals for using clicker-based active learning, with some using it to engage students at specific time points throughout their class sessions and others who selected it as the best way to teach a concept from several possible teaching techniques. Future research should continue to investigate and describe how active-learning strategies from literature may differ from what is being implemented.

This article describes a visual approach to integrating observational data into self-evaluation and peer review of teaching, practices that can lead to adoption of evidence-based active-learning strategies in STEM. This approach was designed to be implemented for undergraduate courses across disciplines. The presentation of observational data in a timeline provides a "big-picture" view of an observed class that captures the sequencing of instructional strategies and the "ebbs and flows" of student participation--in a chronological format that coheres with how instructors often visualize a class session.