By Jordan Kostiuk

Recently, I had the joy of being in community with folks committed to tackling a wicked problem at the Critical Issues in Math Education (CIME) workshop hosted by SLMath: How do we provide equitable and effective math instruction to all students? As an inspirational and motivating three days came to a close, new questions about actionable next steps were top of mind: how do we make it easier for instructors leaving this workshop to make meaningful and lasting change in their own classrooms? A program offered by my Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) helped me do just that, and I believe it has the potential to help others as well.

The Equitable Learning Inquiry (ELI) program is a scaffolded Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) program offered by my local CTL. Guided by assessment staff and course design consultants, participants enter the program to examine historic student outcome data for a specific course, identify a research-backed intervention to help improve outcomes, and assess its impact. The assessment relies on both student grades and responses to the ELI survey, which measures changes in sense of competence, relatedness, and autonomy– behavioral factors influencing motivation. The underlying hypothesis of ELI states that interventions supporting student motivation lead to reductions in achievement gaps and greater persistence in STEM.

I participated in the ELI program to identify and address the inequities in student outcomes for my introductory Linear Algebra course. Initially, learning what the achievement gaps for student success in my course were was sobering, and it triggered some negative feelings about my work. However, I felt supported and un-judged by my ELI collaborators. My local CTL partners coached me through this moment, helping me establish a baseline from which we would work together on making an improvement. With their support, I restructured the course to use Team Based Inquiry Learning (TBIL), a highly active format centered around group problem solving. We also reworked the assessment structure to use elements of Mastery Based Grading and refocused problem sets around conceptual exploration and mathematical communication.

The data resulting from the ELI program’s assessment of my intervention has proved invaluable to me both as an instructor and as a change-agent. Through this data, I’ve come to learn that this new course format has measurably narrowed achievement gaps and improved students’ sense of relatedness and competence. Moreover, our data indicates that these impacts are strongest for students from historically underrepresented groups, women, and first-generation college students. Qualitative data from the assessment has also revealed some key insights into how I might continue to refine the course to further support my students. Beyond helping me as an instructor, this data has been useful to me in sharing my experience in an informed way with colleagues both inside and outside of my department. Stories forged from ELI results have been instrumental in building sustained support for the model from key stakeholders, and has provided me with tangible evidence to use in grant proposals to help scale the work.

Change is hard, whether it’s a course, curriculum, or culture. As we plot our next steps to tackle our wicked problem, I think programs like ELI have the power to be instrumental in supporting our change efforts. How can our community support teaching focused faculty across the nation in collecting critical and actionable assessment data? How can we support each other in telling stories with data to help further our advocacy and change efforts? I’m looking forward to finding out with you all.

Editor’s Note: This is the second post in a series that arose from the Bringing Innovation to Scale: Teaching-Focused Faculty as Change Agents workshop at SLMath (formerly MSRI). Teaching-focused faculty at research institutions are gathering online to share ideas and provide each other support. If you’re interested in joining the conversation, you can access their Zulip community here via either the web or the Zulip app. After you create a free account, organizers request that you introduce yourself on the #Welcome stream.

Jordan Kostiuk is a Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at Brown University and a member of the Silver ‘19 cohort of Project NExT. Outside of teaching, Jordan enjoys running and eating, often simultaneously.