CREATE'ing improvements in first-year students' science efficacy via an online introductory course experience

• Published in: Journal of microbiology & biology education 2024-04, Vol.25 (1), p.e0007923
• Main Authors: Garzke, Jessica, Steinwand, Blaire J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: active learning; group work; instructor learning community; online learning; Research Article; science education
• ISSN: 1935-7877; 1935-7885
• DOI: 10.1128/jmbe.00079-23

With a primary objective to engage students in the process of science online, we transformed a long-standing laboratory course for first-year science students into a more accessible, immersive experience of current biological research using a narrow and focused set of primary literature and the Consider, Read, Elucidate a hypothesis, Analyze and interpret data, Think of the next Experiment (CREATE) pedagogy. The efficacy of the CREATE approach has been demonstrated in a diversity of higher education settings and courses. It is, however, not yet known if CREATE can be successfully implemented online with a large, diverse team of faculty untrained in the CREATE pedagogy. Here, we present the transformation of a large-enrollment, multi-section, multi-instructor course for first-year students in which the instructors follow different biological research questions but work together to reach shared goals and outcomes. We assessed students' (i) science self-efficacy and (ii) epistemological beliefs about science throughout an academic year of instruction fully administered online as a result of ongoing threats posed by COVID-19. Our findings demonstrate that novice CREATE instructors with varying levels of teaching experience and ranks can achieve comparable outcomes and improvements in students' science efficacy in the virtual classroom as a teaching team. This study extends the use of the CREATE pedagogy to large, team-taught, multi-section courses and shows its utility in the online teaching and learning environment.