Assessment of an Activity to Promote Community Building, Inclusion and Perseverance in Introductory College STEM Courses

Abstract

Community, inclusion, and perseverance are essential to the field of STEM education. To promote these values, we developed two discussion-based activities for implementation in introductory college STEM courses. Both activities incorporate watching videos that portray scientists telling the stories of how they became prominent in their field, in-class discussions, and individual reflection. The first activity addresses diversity, community building, and inclusion in the classroom, while the second activity focuses on perseverance and student definitions of success. These activities were fully implemented into three sections of introductory biology during Fall 2020, with one additional section serving as a control. We assessed how effectively these activities addressed their learning goals through a novel pre-/post-survey that incorporated questions from CURE, ASPECT, PITS, and the Classroom Community Scale in addition to original questions.