Studies have shown that students from certain backgrounds are less likely than their peers to complete an undergraduate degree in science, technology, engineering or mathematics — or STEM. These groups are low-income students, first-generation college students, female students and students from underrepresented minority backgrounds: Latinx, African American, Native American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander.

A new study out of the 91̽�� shows that general chemistry — a key introductory-level course series for many STEM degrees — is a major barrier for underrepresented students. In a paper June 10 in Science Advances, researchers report that they examined 15 years of records of student performance, education and demographics for chemistry courses at the UW. They found that underrepresented students received lower grades in the general chemistry series compared to their peers and, if the grade was sufficiently low, were less likely to continue in the series and more likely to leave STEM.

But if underrepresented students completed the first general chemistry course with at least the minimum grade needed to continue in the series, they were more likely than their peers to continue the general chemistry series and complete this major step toward a STEM degree.

“General chemistry is often the first science course that many would-be STEM majors take in college, and it has a brutal reputation for causing lots of attrition,” said senior author , a 91̽��principal lecturer emeritus of biology. “When we examined this large dataset, we discovered that not only is this true, but it is having a disproportionately negative impact on underrepresented students, and likely contributes to lower diversity in STEM fields.”

Chemistry is the study of matter — focusing on the structure, properties and behavior of atoms and more complex compounds. It is its own scientific field, and also a foundational subject for many other scientific disciplines — including biology, medicine and engineering. At many colleges and universities, before would-be doctors can take a biology course, they must pass general chemistry courses, which usually last a year.

Under the UW’s quarter system, the general chemistry series consists of three courses. At universities with a semester system, the series is often two.

For the first course in the 91̽��general chemistry series, the team found that grades for underrepresented students were lower on average than their peers, ranging from 0.13 grade points lower for female students to 0.54 grade points for students from underrepresented minority backgrounds.

Students enter college with different levels of preparation. When the researchers controlled for this by factoring in high school grade-point averages and SAT scores, the gap narrowed for all groups. For example, the gap narrowed to 0.16 grade points for students from underrepresented minority backgrounds. But for no group did the gap disappear, and the team saw similar patterns for the rest of the general chemistry series.

“The fact that the gap persists even after we correct for different levels of academic preparation means that something else is going on — something that is actively penalizing underrepresented students in general chemistry,” said Freeman.

The grade gap has consequences. In the 91̽��and many other institutions, students must receive a minimum grade, often a C-minus or equivalent, in the first general chemistry course in order to take the next one. The team found that underrepresented students receiving a grade lower than the minimum — a D or F — were less likely than their peers who received the same grade to retake the course and thus continue in STEM.

But, the team also discovered that students from underrepresented groups are what Freeman calls “hyperpersistent.” Underrepresented students who received a C-minus or better in the first general chemistry course were more likely than peers who received the same grade to continue the series.

“Underrepresented students are showing resiliency, if they can meet that minimum threshold,” said Freeman.

For the study, the researchers examined records from 25,768 students who took 91̽��chemistry courses between 2001 and 2016. These included both general chemistry and organic chemistry, a more advanced year-long course series that follows general chemistry and is required for many STEM degrees in chemistry, health and medicine. The team saw similar, but smaller, disparities in grades and passing rates for underrepresented students in organic chemistry.

Now that the team has identified a major reason that fewer underrepresented students continue in STEM, Freeman and his colleagues want to understand why. One major reason may be teaching methods. During the study period, both general chemistry and organic chemistry were taught using traditional, lecture-based formats. Freeman and his team have previously shown that so-called “active learning” methods create more inclusive learning environments and boost student performance in STEM courses. These techniques often rely on discussions and problem-solving approaches, and disproportionately benefit underrepresented students.

There are likely other factors, including larger socioeconomic and cultural issues, said Freeman. But the hyperpersistence the team discovered, if confirmed by other studies, may offer a path forward.

“It may be that if you can make changes to coursework and learning that boost student performance — that help underrepresented students get at least that minimum grade to keep going — they can do it,” said Freeman. “These students can do the hard work. They have what it takes.”

Lead author on the paper is Rebecca Harris, a former data analyst with the UW’s Biology Education Research Group, which co-led the study with the 91̽��Department of Chemistry. Co-authors are Michael Mack, a 91̽��postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry; , a former 91̽��lecturer in the Department of Chemistry; and , a 91̽��research associate and instructor in the Department of Biology. Harris is now at Adaptive Biotechnologies. Bryant is now an associate professor at the University of Southern California. The research was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the UW.

For more information, contact Freeman at 206-543-1620 or srf991@uw.edu.

Students from different backgrounds in the United States enter college with equal interest in STEM fields — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But that equal interest does not result in equal outcomes. Six years after starting an undergraduate STEM degree, roughly twice as many white students finished it compared to African American students.

A new study by researchers at the 91̽�� shows that teaching techniques in undergraduate STEM courses can significantly narrow gaps in course performance between students who are overrepresented and underrepresented in STEM. In a published March 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reports that switching from passive techniques, such as traditional lectures, to inquiry-based “active learning” methods has a disproportionate benefit for underrepresented students, a term that encompasses low-income students and Latinx, African American, Native American, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students.

The researchers used a meta-analysis approach, which combined student-level data from dozens of individual studies, to investigate how student performance changed when instructors incorporated more active learning methods into undergraduate STEM courses. They found that the achievement gap between overrepresented and underrepresented students narrowed on exam scores by 33% and course passing rates by 45%. For “high-intensity” active learning courses, in which students spent at least two-thirds of total class time engaged in active learning, the gap for exam scores shrank by 42% and 76%, respectively, for passing rates.

“Our study shows that broad implementation of active learning in undergraduate STEM courses can have a dramatic effect on reducing achievement gaps, resulting in more positive outcomes for students who are underrepresented in STEM fields,” said lead and co-corresponding author , a research associate and instructor in the 91̽��Department of Biology.

Research has shown that the achievement gaps in college STEM degree programs occur in part because students from underrepresented backgrounds tend to score lower on exams and have lower passing rates in entry-level undergraduate STEM courses. As a result, more underrepresented students switch majors or drop out of college. Six years after starting a STEM degree, 43% of white students and 52% of Asian American students have finished it. But completion rates drop to between 20 and 30% for Latinx, African American and Native American students, the National Academy of Sciences. Disparities in earning STEM degrees also exist between students from high- and low-income backgrounds, said Theobald.

College STEM courses using traditional, passive methods like lectures. In contrast, active learning techniques, which include a variety of discussion-based and problem-solving teaching methods, have not been widely adopted.

“You can sum up the difference between passive and active teaching methods in three simple words: ‘Ask, don’t tell,’” said co-corresponding author , principal lecturer in the 91̽��Department of Biology. “The goal of active learning is to engage students and get them to use their higher-order cognitive skills — instead of simply memorizing definitions.”

Active learning approaches include in-class group activities to work in depth on specific concepts, using class time for peer interaction, problem-solving assignments and calling on students at random.

In a , a 91̽��team led by Freeman used a more classical meta-analysis approach to show that active learning methods boost average student performance. For this new study, they used a different meta-analysis approach that tracks individual participants and breaks down the impact of active learning between overrepresented and underrepresented students. The researchers had to sort through more than 1,800 published and unpublished studies before finding the few dozen that both compared active and passive techniques and also had data on student demographics, according to Freeman. The student exam score data they used came from 15 studies — representing more than 9,000 students — while the data on passing rates came from 26 studies of more than 44,000 students.

On average, the team saw that active learning methods narrowed the achievement gaps significantly in both exam scores and passing rates between overrepresented and underrepresented student groups.

Future research is needed to understand why active learning disproportionately benefits students from underrepresented backgrounds. These learning techniques could create a more welcoming and inclusive environment, which may be especially important for students who often feel as if they don’t belong in STEM, or “feel excluded,” said Theobald. Active learning may also help students comprehend material better by taking them through complex concepts step by step, with regular check-in moments. This targeted, intensive practice may disproportionally help students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, by ensuring they understand the material and don’t fall behind.

“These are loud, active rooms, with lots of dynamic interactions and opportunities to discuss and learn at a level you simply don’t get using a traditional lecture,” said Freeman.

Though they saw the greatest gap-narrowing effects in courses that devoted more than two-thirds of class time to active learning, both Freeman and Theobald caution instructors to take it slow in incorporating the approach.

“If you have a lecture-based course that you’ve already taught even just a few times, changing it can take a lot of work,” said Theobald. “College professors and instructors already have so many demands on their time — mentoring graduate students, applying for grants, conducting research, writing papers, grading, teaching. I understand that it’s a lot to ask them to flip their classes like this. So I advise people to start small and incorporate active learning techniques over time.”

The increasingly clear benefits of active learning may mean that colleges and universities, as well as professional societies, could provide incentives and assistance to professors and instructors who want to take the plunge, added Freeman.

“It’s time to reward people for getting good results in the classroom, because now we see that the benefits are even greater than we thought,” said Freeman.

91̽��co-authors on the study are Mariah Hill, Elisa Tran, Sweta Agrawal, Nicole Arroyo, Shawn Behling, Dianne Laboy Cintrón, Jacob Cooper, Gideon Dunster, Jared Grummer, Kelly Hennessey, Jennifer Hsiao, Nicole Iranon, Leonard Jones II, Hannah Jordt, Marlowe Keller, Melissa Lacey, Caitlin Littlefield, Alexander Lowe, Shannon Newman, Vera Okolo, Savannah Olroyd, Brandon Peecook, Sarah Pickett, David Slager, Itzue Caviedes-Solis, Kathryn Stanchak, Camila Valdebenito, Claire Williams and Kaitlin Zinsli. Additional co-authors are Nyasha Chambwe from the Institute for Systems Biology and Vasudha Sundaravaradan from Shoreline Community College. The research was funded by the 91̽��.

For more information, contact Freeman at 206-543-1620 or srf991@uw.edu and Theobald at 206-543-7321 or ellij@uw.edu. Theobald is currently traveling, but still available for media requests.

Active learning also improves exam performance – in some cases enough to change grades by half a letter or more so a B-plus, for example, becomes an A-minus.

Those findings are from the largest and most comprehensive analysis ever published of studies comparing lecturing to active learning in undergraduate education, said , a 91̽�� principal lecturer in . He’s lead author of a in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of May 12.

Freeman and his co-authors based their findings on 225 studies of undergraduate education across all of the “STEM” areas: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. They found that 55 percent more students fail lecture-based courses than classes with at least some active learning. Two previous studies looked only at subsets of the STEM areas and none before considered failure rates.

On average across all the studies, a little more than one-third of students in traditional lecture classes failed – that is, they either withdrew or got Fs or Ds, which generally means they were ineligible to take more advanced courses. On average with active learning, a little more than one-fifth of students failed.

“If you have a course with 100 students signed up, about 34 fail if they get lectured to but only 22 fail if they do active learning according to our analysis,” Freeman said. “There are hundreds of thousands of students taking STEM courses in U.S. colleges every year, so we’re talking about tens of thousands of students who could stay in STEM majors instead of flunking out – every year.”

This could go a long way toward meeting national calls like the one from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology saying the U.S. needs a million more STEM majors in the future, Freeman said.

Attempts by college faculty to use active learning, long popular in K-12 classrooms, started taking off in the mid-1990s, Freeman said, though lecturing still dominates.

“We’ve got to stop killing student performance and interest in science by lecturing and instead help them think like scientists,” he said.

In introduction to biology courses, Freeman’s largest 91̽��class had 700 students, he expects students to read their $200 textbooks and arrive in class knowing the material for the day. Quizzes on the readings the night before keep their feet to the fire.

“These students got into college by being ferocious memorizers so we don’t need to spend class time going over what they’ve already read,” Freeman says. “A reading assignment on how sperm and eggs form might then lead me to ask the class how male contraceptives might work. After giving them time to come up with their own ideas and rationale, I might give them a couple more minutes to discuss it with each other, and then I call on students randomly to start the discussion.”

Knowing they could get called on at any time encourages students to stay focused.

Having students use clickers ­– hand-held wireless devices – to answer multiple-choice questions in class is another example of how active learning keeps students engaged.

“We characterize it as, ‘Ask, don’t tell,'” said a 91̽��principal lecturer and a co-author on the paper.

For the paper, more than 640 studies comparing lecturing with some kind of active learning were examined by Freeman, Wenderoth and their other co-authors, Sarah Eddy, Miles McDonough, Nnadozie Okoroafor and Hannah Jordt, all with the 91̽��biology department, and Michelle Smith with the University of Maine. The studies, conducted at four-year and community colleges mainly in the U.S., appeared in STEM education journals, databases,  dissertations and conference proceedings.

Some 225 of those studies met the standards to be included in the analysis including: assurances the groups of students being compared were equally qualified and able; that instructors or groups of instructors were the same; and that exams given to measure performance were either exactly alike or used questions pulled from the same pool of questions each time.

The data were considered using meta-analysis, an approach long used in fields such as biomedicine to determine the effectiveness of a treatment based on studies with a variety of patient groups, providers and ways of administering the therapy or drugs.

About grade improvement, the findings showed improvements on exams increased an average of 6 percent. Using grading typical in UW’s introductory biology, physics and chemistry courses, a gain of 6 percent would have raised students half a grade turning a C-plus into a B-minus, for example, or a B-plus into an A-minus.

If the failure rates of 34 percent for lecturing and 22 percent in classes with some active learning were applied to the 7 million U.S. undergraduates who say they want to pursue STEM majors, some 2.38 million students would fail lecture-style courses vs. 1.54 million with active learning. That’s 840,000 additional students failing under lecturing, a difference of 55 percent compared to the failure rate of active learning.

“That 840,000 students is a large portion of the million additional STEM majors the president’s council called for,” Freeman said.

Community colleges and universities could help faculty incorporate effective active learning by providing guidance – the UW, for instance, has a to share expertise – as well as rewards, Freeman said.

###

For more information:
Freeman, srf991@uw.edu
Wenderoth, 206-685-8022, mpw@uw.edu

**
Suggested contacts: Helping faculty change
Can describe the 91̽��’s two decades-long effort to encourage faculty to incorporate active learning and improve teaching by providing such things as workshops, information and overviews of best practices.
–Gerald Baldasty
Senior Vice Provost for Academic and Student Affairs
206-543-6616
baldasty@u.washington.edu
–Beth Kalikoff
Director of the 91̽��Center for Teaching and Learning
206-543-2957
kalikoff@uw.edu

Suggested contact: Expert willing to comment on the PNAS publication
–Carl Wieman
Professor of physics and education, Stanford University
Formerly associate director for science, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and former director of science education initiatives at the University of Colorado and the University of British Columbia
cwieman@stanford.edu
650-725-2356 (Rachel Knowles can help you reach Wieman by phone)

Students
–Please contact Sandra Hines, shines@uw.edu, for names of 91̽��undergraduates available to talk to reporters

Suggested contacts: 91̽��collaborators at other institutions
–University of Maine
Michelle Smith
Assistant professor of biology and ecology (Note: Smith is a co-author on the paper)
207-581-2604
michelle.k.smith@maine.edu

–University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Kelly Hogan
Senior lecturer in biology and director of instructional innovation for the College of Arts and Sciences
leek@email.unc.edu

–Eastern Michigan University
Anne Casper
Assistant professor of biology
734-487-0212
anne.casper@emich.edu