Testing and Examining the Impact of a Set of STEM-Oriented Creative Video Projects on STEM Students' Psychosocial, Persistence, and Scholastic Outcomes (In-Progress).

This project is being conducted by Texas A&M International University (TAMIU); a Hispanicserving institution in the U.S. southern border city of Laredo, Texas. The project has a programmatic and a research component; it focuses on generating knowledge about strategies to enhance undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. The programmatic component aims to increase the quantity and improve the quality of retained and graduated STEM students. This is done by engaging 3 consecutive cohorts in a 4-semester pre-/early college (i.e., pre-college summer and freshman fall/spring/summer semesters) curriculum-based STEM-enrichment program called USTEM. USTEM implements high-impact and proven STEM-enrichment activities, practices, and strategies that have been published in the literature. The research component studies how an original set of creative video projects (CVPs) influences students' psychosocial, scholastic, and persistence outcomes. This study entails randomizing half of each cohort to participate in USTEM without CVPs (USTEM1) and the other half to participate in USTEM with CVPs (USTEM2). USTEM2 participants produce four CVPs: 1) a biography of a STEM scientist, 2) a position statement on a STEM controversy, 3) a tutorial on a STEM topic, and 4) a critique of a STEM peer-reviewed research article. Outcomes are measured at every end-of-semester. The generated data allow for evaluating the efficacy of USTEM2 versus USTEM1 and the parametric characterization of trends across semesters. In this report, we present preliminary results generated from five completed measurement occasions (M1-M5) for Cohort 1 (at M1: USTEM1, n=22; USTEM2, n=19) and Cohort 2 (at M1: USTEM1, n=12; USTEM2, n=17) vis-à-vis five PSO indicators: 1) academic self-efficacy in STEM (ASESTEM; an average of 3 items), 2) self-efficacy in performing STEM tasks (STEMTaskSE; an average of 4 items), 3) sense of belonging in STEM (STEMSB; an average of 18 items), 4) STEM self-identity (STEMSI; an average of 4 items), and 5) sentiments about staying in a STEM major (STEMstay; an average of 2 items). Deployed online, each of the five PSO indicators comprises 7-point Likert-scaled items adopted from the extant literature on STEM education. From our preliminary results, we discovered that the timing of measurements has a noticeable impact on PSOs. However, we did not observe significant differences between cohorts or comparison groups (there was no clear distinction between USTEM1 and USTEM2). Our findings suggest that USTEM participants experience an improved sense of belonging during pre-college and freshman summer camps, which are more relaxed times that may have provided opportunities for participants to bond with old and new friends. However, we observed a decline in academic selfefficacy and intention to stay in STEM during the freshman fall semester. This could be due to the combined effect of participants' first-time exposure to college-level STEM courses, a new social environment, and the demands of college life. It is important to note that we are still collecting data for Cohort 3, and we will update our results once these data are included in our analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]