2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Colleges and universities offer most scientific content in courses offered by STEM departments (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), although many humanities, social sciences, and pre-professional disciplines require scientific literacy. This research study, funded through NSF Award No. 1914869, evaluates the Collaboration Across Boundaries (CAB) pedagogical model, a novel approach to infusing scientific literacy across disciplines. CAB incorporates project-based, community-engaged learning in undergraduate courses that pair STEM or social science students registered in one course with students in another course, including humanities and pre-professional disciplines. Over the past three years, we have conducted pre- and post-testing of 528 students at a primarily undergraduate institution in 30 courses to determine how students' learning changed after completing a course-based CAB project. Among the participating STEM courses that have collaborated with courses in other disciplines are: Database Systems (6 sections), Software Engineering (6 sections), Electronics (1 section), Environmental and Biotechnology Systems (1 section), and Fundamentals of (Civil) Engineering Design (1 section). Paired sample t-tests determined that students report their own scientific literacy (skills and thinking) improved from pre- to post-test, regardless of the discipline of the course and across teaching modalities (emergency pivot to remote, remote, hybrid, and in-person teaching).
While there are significant differences at initial levels at which students report their own scientific literacy, analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicates that the mean change from pre- to post-test did not differ significantly between students enrolled in STEM, social science, or other courses. Standardized objective pre- to post-testing, including both the Test of Scientific Literacy (ToSLS) and a pilot measure created for this project, failed to produce consistent improvements, and generally indicated a decline from pre- to post-test. We suggest that an ungraded, online post-test given at the end of the semester is an unreliable instrument for objectively measuring student learning, particularly when student fatigue has been intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic. While our subjective results suggest the effectiveness of this innovative pedagogy, future research should investigate whether a graded, course-specific assessment would be a better tool for evaluating how scientific literacy improved after completing a CAB project.