Implementing a large-scale reform of all science labs at a research university.
C.A. Ogilvie, E.A. Addis, D.C. Bassham, N. Boury, J.L. Brigham, C. Cervato, C.L. Chaffee, J.S.
Chen, M.P. Clough, C.R. Coffman, J.T. Colbert, E.R. Elliott, W.A. Gallus Jr., D.A. Gentile, T.J.
Greenbowe, W.S. Harpole, C. Henderson, P. Herrera Siklody, T. Holme, C.R. Kerton, G.
Mynhardt, N.L.B. Pohl, J. A. Powell-Coffman, S. Prell, K.M. Quardokus, M.C. Slade, E.S.
Takle, A. Travesset
Abstract
We used an emergent change strategy reinforced by department and college leadership to
implement a large-scale curriculum reform at a research-intensive public university. The
enrollment in the reformed courses is over 12,000 students. Complexity Leadership theory
informed the project and is used to analyze the efficacy of this change initiative. Eighty faculty
across nine science departments worked in Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) to determine
the direction of the education reform and to implement changes with the main goal of students
doing science in their first two years of university, and hence improve student learning and
increase retention. The FLCs changed the 1st and 2nd-year science laboratory courses by
replacing cookbook labs with inquiry labs, and providing course-based research project
opportunities. The faculty teaching the second semester biology course used their FLC to
jointly develop a range of active learning exercises to be used in each of their classes. These
tasks included peer discussions and applying concepts in short case studies. A similar initiative
to add active learning into introductory physics and chemistry did not succeed. The reasons for
the success in the lab reforms, biology lectures and the failures in chemistry and physics are
discussed in the context of Complexity Leadership theory and the emergent change strategy.
1
Keywords: STEM education reform, laboratory courses, emergent change, and Complexity
Leadership theory.
Introduction
University students learn more science when they are actively engaged with the material, as
opposed to passively listening to lectures or following instructions in cookbook science labs
(Pascarella and Terenzini, 2005, Singer, Nielsen, & Schweingruber, 2012, Freeman et al., 2014).
Active learning includes strategies in which students discuss concepts and applications and then
receive prompt feedback and answers to their questions. This dynamic allows students to
recognize their misperceptions and to incorporate new material into their growing understanding
of the subject (Andrews, Leonard, Colgrove, & Kal, 2011). Although many of these strategies
have been developed and tested in individual classes, a significant challenge is implementing
research-based instructional strategies at a large scale, especially in universities that enroll large
numbers of students in foundational STEM courses (Fairweather 2008, PCAST 2012).
Researchers have examined barriers to change initiatives as well as characteristics of successful
reforms. That a particular teaching practice has been shown to be very effective is a necessary
but not sufficient condition for it to be used by other faculty. The change process needs to
incorporate and address constraints on faculty’s time as well as the allocation of resources and
rewards that are provided to faculty who implement reforms (Fairweather 2008, Anderson et al.,
2011, Eckel and Kezar 2012, Hazen et al. 2012, and Bourrie et al. 2014). Faculty make
decisions on teaching that take into account their beliefs about how students learn and their
perceptions about how the structure and culture of their university supports and rewards their
time (Hora 2012). Some instructors are not convinced of the efficacy of active learning or are
2
concerned that interactive pedagogies and the processes of formative feedback will take too
much time. Other faculty have taken steps towards active learning, but became discouraged after
an initial attempt, often without the support needed to successfully implement these changes
(Henderson, Dancy, and Niewiadomska-Bugaj, 2012).
Faculty report they changed how they teach in response to students, or personal interactions with
other faculty, together with the freedom to control changes to their courses (Fincher et al. 2012).
The role of faculty spending time in discussions with peers has been confirmed by Sunal et al.,
2008, Eckel and Kezar 2012, and Siddiqui and Adams 2013. Groups of faculty inevitably
produce a local variation of the pedagogy (Foote 2014), so the flexibility to make changes is key
for the change initiative to be successful (Hazen et al 2012).
We build on these ideas of successful reforms using groups of faculty to implement a large-scale
reform at a research-intensive public university. We used an emergent change strategy reinforced
by department and college leadership (Austin, 2011; Beach, Finkelstein, Henderson 2011, and
Borrego and Henderson, 2014). In emergent change, administrative leaders may provide the
initial reason for gathering a community of faculty colleagues, but the community determines
which direction the education reform will go (Henderson et al. 2011).
Our main goal was to engage university students by transforming 1st and 2nd-year science
courses, so that more students did science and developed strong on science process skills and an
increased understanding of the Nature of Science. To accomplish these goals, 80 faculty from
across nine science departments have worked in Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) to
implement reforms. These FLCs have 1) added extended 5-6 week research projects to lab
3
courses so that more science students conduct research; 2) changed all large-enrollment
introductory labs from cookbook to inquiry; and 3) added active learning to the class meetings of
large-enrollment classes. The combined enrollment of these courses is over 12,000.
The objectives of this paper are two-fold: 1) To illustrate emergent change through a case study
of implementing large-scale adoption of research-based pedagogy, 2) To interpret the lessons we
learned using a theory of emergent change: Complexity Leadership theory.
Theoretical foundations
Complexity Leadership Theory combines ideas from complexity science and social network
analysis to help organizations better understand how to create conditions that are likely to lead to
productive innovations (Borrego & Henderson, 2014; Quardokus & Henderson, in review). It
acknowledges that complex systems cannot be completely described, nor their dynamics
controlled or predicted (Goldstein et al., 2010). The task of leadership is to create the conditions
for productive innovations to emerge, and then identify and support the best results from this
process to ensure that these are integrated into the organization (Schreiber & Carley, 2008). A
key feature of Complexity Leadership theory is that productive ideas emerge when people with
diverse knowledge and perspectives interact around a shared problem or vision (Plowman et al.,
2007). In this change initiative, our broad vision was that “students should do science in the first
two years of college”.
In our project, Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) were the main structure for enacting
change through the Complexity Leadership model. FLCs provide safe, supportive communities
in which faculty can investigate and take risks in implementing new approaches to teaching
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(Cox, 1995, Addis et al. 2013, Austin & Rivard, 2015). FLCs also provide a base to collaborate
across disciplines (Cox, 2001; 2003) and help achieve lasting changes in instructors’ beliefs and
practices (Beach & Cox, 2009).
One of the known barriers to instructional change is faculty’s lack of time needed to develop, or
learn about, and then implement, new instruction (Austin, 2011; Henderson, Dancy, and
Niewiadomska-Bugaj, 2012). Our project, recognizing the work of Wieman et al., 2010, hired
six postdoctoral fellows over the course of the project to assist faculty. Each postdoc worked
within one of the FLCs and helped faculty implement ideas that the FLC developed. The postdoc
brought in new ideas, both from the literature and from interacting with the larger change
initiative. An important role of the postdocs was to help with assessment. Documenting the
results of implementation is important both for improving implementation, but also for
convincing others.
At research institutions lab sections are usually taught by graduate teaching assistants, and we
quickly recognized that their involvement was critical for a successful implementation of our
change initiative. Adapting the FLC model, we created Graduate Teaching Assistants Learning
Communities (GTALCs) led by the postdocs. In the GTALCs, experienced TAs who were
committed to the reformed labs interacted with new TAs. The result was greater buy-in by TAs
and better coordination across different lab sections and disciplines (Linenberger et al., 2014).
Complexity Leadership theory posits three leadership roles: administrative leadership, adaptive
leadership, and enabling leadership (Uhl-Bien and Marion, 2008). Administrative leadership
includes the role of structuring tasks for the organization, planning for the future, and building
5
vision with flexibility to allow unexpected innovations. In our change initiative, administrative
leadership tasks were done by the principal investigator (PI), and the co-PIs. Adaptive leadership
is the work of individuals who invest time to get to know each other, challenge each other,
wrestle with problems and jointly develop creative solutions to complex problems. In our change
initiative, adaptive leadership tasks were done by faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students
working in Faculty and Graduate TA Learning Communities. Enabling Leadership connects
people who are in the roles of administrative and adaptive leadership and disseminates
innovations to organizations. These tasks were done by the facilitators of the learning
communities and the advisory board of the change initiative. Other university leaders, e.g. chairs
of departments, Deans of Colleges, can also perform enabling leadership tasks if they are
connected to the project in a timely manner.
Figure 1: The three leader roles in Complexity Leadership theory in the context of our education change
initiative. The arrows indicate connections and communication between people in these roles.
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Change as implemented
The broad vision for the FLCs was to provide more opportunities for students do science in their
first two years. Table 1 summarizes the five FLCs that worked on this change initiative.
FLC
Scope
Number of Years of operation
faculty
Research experiences
Inquiry labs in intro lab courses.
in lab courses
Research projects into lab courses.
Intro large lectures in
Conceptual understanding and transfer of
physical sciences
math techniques to science courses.
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AY 2011-14
17
AY 2011, AY 2013
11
AY 2011, AY 2014
12
AY 2011-14
8
AY 2013
Add active learning to large lectures.
First semester biology
Broader understanding of biology.
Add active learning to large lectures
Second semester
Broader understanding of biology.
biology
Add active learning to large lectures
300-level physical
Stronger problem-solving skills.
sciences
Add active learning to lectures
The three main reforms that the FLCs designed and implemented were inquiry labs, research
projects in courses, and active learning in large class meetings.
Inquiry-labs
Instead of students following detailed, “cook-book”, instructions, we wanted students to act and
think more like scientists within inquiry labs (French and Russell, 2002). All introductory
physics lab courses adopted the Process Oriented Guided Inquiry learning (POGIL, Moog et al.
2009) approach. At the start of the lab, the TA introduces a scientific question that students will
address in lab, e.g. to what extent is air an ideal gas. The class discusses how to answer the
7
question and groups of student do experiments to address the question. At the end of the lab, the
students pool class data, and each group shares their results. The reforms have been implemented
for both algebra and calculus-based physics and over 3850 students enroll each year.
In the first-semester biology lab, students learn about biodiversity as a biologist would.
Specimens are labeled, but not by taxonomic group, and students learn to observe characteristics
and use information resources, to identify the large-scale taxonomic groups to which the
specimens belong. The students answer basic questions about the organisms by carefully
observing the specimens using dissecting and compound microscopes. The course enrollment is
currently 1770 students across the year.
For the second semester biology lab, faculty and staff have developed one to two inquiry labs
each summer for the past two years, with the goal of steadily converting cookbook labs. The first
lab was on student-generated investigations on photosynthesis (dependence on conditions etc.).
The next two modified labs were a Properties of an Enzyme lab and a Cellular Respiration lab.
Over 1300 students enroll in this biology lab course each year.
The Chemistry department uses guided-inquiry labs adapted from the Science Writing Heuristic
labs (Pook et al. 2007), where the entire section of students discusses how well they have
established the scientific question of the day. Chemistry has also added a capstone project, where
over 600 students in the course first replicate the results from a chemistry paper that was
published in the 1990s on the photoreduction of iron (III) in a marine ecosystem. Then the
students write a proposal on how to modify the experiment to increase the percentage of
8
photoreduction, receive feedback from their TAs, execute their modifications, and present their
results to their peers in a formal presentation.
The Geology department helps students prepare for a 6-week research project, by changing all
cookbook labs in the first part of the semester to inquiry labs. Students completed inquiry labs on
Mineral and Rock Identification, Rock Cycle, Plate Tectonics, Pangaea, Topographic Maps, and
Geologic Time. Over 150 students enroll in this geology lab course each year.
Research projects in lab courses with enrollments 20 to 300
Embedding research projects into lab courses provides more students an opportunity to
experience and learn from authentic science research (Weaver, 2008, Cahalan, 2011, Spell 2014,
and Cervato 2014). Faculty have added 5- to 6-week-long projects to nine science lab courses.
We organize the course-based research projects into four categories that are shown in Fig. 2.
Figure 2: Four categories of course-based research projects in comparison with working in a faculty lab.
Moving across the categories from bottom to top increases the depth of experience for the
student leading to work in a faculty research lab. Course-based research categories, especially
those on the right of Fig. 2, can reach more students.
9
Student-driven extensions of inquiry labs
Biol 256L: Fundamentals of Human Physiology. Students completed several, standard human
physiology investigations in the first half-of the semester. After each experiment they developed
a hypothesis to test using the protocols they had just learned. Students received constructive
feedback on these proposals from TAs, and in the final 4 weeks of the semester, student teams
chose one of their proposed investigations to pursue as a research project.
Class-wide, linked projects
Geology 100L: The Earth: Laboratory. Student groups studied local surface water and
groundwater quality issues using monitoring wells. Each group developed an open-ended
research question and hypothesis, collected, synthesized and summarized the data, and presented
their results in a conference-style poster session.
Chem 334L: Laboratory in Organic Chemistry II for Chemistry Majors. Students from
chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering majors developed new synthetic protocols to
a novel fluorous dye molecule, in part using laboratory-grade microwaves (Slade et al., 2014).
Class coopted into faculty lab
Biol 313L: Genetics Laboratory. Students unofficially joined the NSF Engineering Research
Center for Biorenewable Chemicals, whose mission is using biorenewable feedstock to replace
petroleum-based products. Each group of students in the lab course designed an experiment to
compare fatty acid production of their strain of yeast (1 of 22 yeast strains) compared with a
parental strain. They performed a literature search, interpreted preliminary gas chromatography–
10
mass spectrometry (GC-MS) data from their strain, and carried out their experimental design.
Chem 201L: Advanced General Chemistry. First-year chemistry majors unofficially joined a
faculty member’s research group and choose different substrates on which to reduce CO2 to
ethylene and other useful hydrocarbons. For details see Ihrig et al. (2014).
Student research idea, done in a course
Astro 344L: Astronomy Laboratory. Students used small telescopes, up to 14-inch in size,
together with Charged-Coupled-Device (CCD) imaging. Example projects included observations
of bright stars in two young galactic clusters to determine their respective evolutionary state and
the detection of an extrasolar planet orbiting a star over 450 light years from Earth.
Astro 346: Introduction to Astrophysics. Students searched original literature and planned
observational projects using publicly available telescope data. Example projects included testing
the period-luminosity of Cepheids stars using photometry, measuring the mass and radius of
exoplanets, and running stellar evolution models to study the effects of metallicity.
Biol 354L: Animal Behavior. Example research questions included “Do ants have a color bias
for preferred food types regardless of quality?” and “Does host size affect the number and size of
eggs laid by female parasitic jewel wasps?” The groups designed experiments, collected and
analyzed data, and presented their findings in both a short scientific report and class presentation.
Mteor 301. General Meteorology. Sample projects include the impact of topography on
temperature and dew point; air temperature differences due to land use; how a local lake
influences air temperatures around the lake; and the correlation between upper level winds and
the movement of surface low pressure systems. The temperature and dew point experiments
used IButton thermochrons while the other experiments used data available from online sources.
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Active Learning in Large Class Meetings
Many of our science faculty are interested in using course meeting times to add active learning
tasks into traditional lectures to best utilize student and faculty interaction, e.g. students wrestling
with new concepts through discussions. The faculty teaching the second semester biology course
used their FLC to jointly develop a range of active learning exercises to be used in each of their
classes. More details can be found in Elliott et al. (2014). A similar initiative to add active
learning into introductory physics and chemistry did not succeed. Progress has also been slow in
first semester biology. The reasons behind these two failures are discussed later in this paper.
Faculty in the 300-level physical science FLC are reforming their 300-level science courses. The
main strategy is to add small group collaboration tasks during class for student groups to work on
problems. Each problem focuses on current and past lecture topics, often synthesizing material
covered over several lectures. In addition, the FLC recognized the need for higher level of
coordination among the courses taught in the different departments.
Impact of the Change Initiative
We examine two impacts: retention and increased student learning. We define 1-year STEM
retention as the fraction of incoming, direct from high-school, STEM majors who were still
STEM majors at our university a year later. In the years before our reform project, i.e. students
who entered Fall 2006, 2007, and 2008, the 1-year STEM retention was 74.5% ± 0.5%.
Approximately half of the students who did not persist left our university and approximately half
were still enrolled but in a non-STEM major. At this point in the change initiative, the 1-year
retention of STEM majors for Fall 2012 entrants is 78.9% ± 0.7%. The increase in retention is
4.4% ± 0.9%, i.e. one-fifth of those students we were losing are now being retained in STEM.
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The two-year retention number has also improved, from 64.4% ± 0.6% to a current 68.0% ±
0.9%. The increase in retention is encouraging, but we do not know if this is caused by the
change initiative. Other factors such as changes in the economy could contribute. However, since
75% of first year STEM students took at least one reformed course it is not without basis to
postulate a role for the project.
The project has recently published or submitted results on student learning:
● Students undertaking research projects in lab courses increased their understanding of the
nature of science, especially that science requires creativity (Ogilvie et al 2014).
● Students who completed chemistry research projects see more connection between science
and real-world applications and their self-efficacy improves (Ihrig et al. 2014).
● Students who completed inquiry labs in the first semester of biology increased their
understanding of diversity (Mynhardt et al. 2014).
● Students in the second semester of biology increased their understanding of macromolecule
structure and function, cellular biology, and energetics. These increases were correlated with
the amount of time an instructor used for active learning in class (Elliott et al. 2014).
Lessons Learned
We interpret the lessons we learned in terms of Complexity Leadership theory. If we can
successfully interpret our case in terms of this theory, then this adds a piece of evidence to the
usefulness of this theory for implementing educational change. It may also be more productive
for other universities to use this theory of change rather than to try and adapt our particular set of
reforms. We organize both our successes and failures under each of the three leadership roles of
Complexity Leadership theory: administrative, adaptive, and enabling leadership.
13
Administrative leadership includes the role of structuring tasks for the organization, planning for
the future, and building vision with flexibility to allow unexpected innovations.
Successes
● Creation of FLCs and recruited faculty to work in these communities. The broad vision of
“1st and 2nd year students should do science” resonated with faculty.
● Hired postdocs who had time to research options for the FLCs, led the drafting/testing
materials and assessed the effectiveness of the reforms. Faculty know that postdocs are
career-vulnerable and hence delays in implementing reforms were kept to a minimum.
● Lab staff were included in both the first discussions and implementation of the labs. Their
knowledge and support were vital.
● Each reform was constrained to have the same operational costs as typically incurred before
the reform. This limitation meant that the modified labs were sustainable. Funds were
provided to enable start-up costs for equipment, testing etc.
● Change sometimes occurs in unanticipated sequences. For example, implementing inquiry
labs in general chemistry followed the positive experiences faculty had with reformed labs in
the smaller course taken by chemistry majors. Also, physical science faculty teaching 300level courses coalesced around a FLC with the broad vision of improving students’ problemsolving strategies. This FLC arose from discussions at the 100- and 200-level of the
challenges students were having applying math knowledge to science courses.
Failures
● Two of the lecture-focused FLCs were ineffective, likely because the broad vision did not
match with the goals of these faculty. Faculty in the Bio 1st semester FLC thought that
students need to master the basics of biology first before working on more complex projects,
14
and that the current material was sufficiently challenging for their students. While in the FLC
for large introductory physics and chemistry courses, the faculty came to the consensus that
the problems they were facing had more to do to with poor math preparation and was largely
a problem for high schools and math department to solve, and the work of the FLC fizzled
out. In both cases neither the administrative leadership nor the faculty developed a vision that
was persuasive enough for faculty to commit time and effort to the work of the FLC to
reform their lecture courses and add more active learning.
Adaptive leadership is the work of individuals who invest time to get to know each other, wrestle
with problems and jointly develop creative solutions to complex problems.
Successes
● Members of the research and 2nd semester bio FLCs met over several semesters. They
worked through how to provide students the opportunity to do science and provided mutual
support to each other during implementation bumps. The FLCs reduced the time pressures
experienced by faculty through the efficiency of jointly developing and sharing solutions.
● Postdocs were able to leverage the success of the project for their career. Three of the six
postdocs have faculty positions at liberal arts colleges, one is a staff member at a university’s
teaching and learning center, one is still a postdoc on the project, and one is on family leave.
Failures
● We did not recognize early the challenge of ensuring that TAs act in fidelity with the
reformed pedagogy. In recent observations some TAs have been circumventing the inquiry
design by offering complete, cookbook instructions to their students.
15
Enabling Leadership connects people who are in the roles of administrative and adaptive
leadership and disseminates innovations to the organization.
Successes
● FLC facilitators were faculty members who set the main topics to be discussed during the
FLC and led the team-work. The facilitators met with the administrative leadership 1-2 times
each semester for discussions on progress, goals, and priorities.
● Postdocs embedded in the FLCs held numerous one-on-one working meetings with faculty
on designing and implementing the reforms. The postdocs also had monthly meetings with
the administrative leadership for updates, planning and feedback.
● GTALC facilitators, including postdocs and senior TAs, who built a community of TAs to
learn how to best teach students within the reformed labs.
● There were instances where leaders took advantage of unforeseen opportunities. These
included the assignment of a new set of faculty to teach second semester biology. These
faculty were motivated to work together to improve student learning and to save time by
collaborating. Also when a chemistry lab instructor took a sabbatical, other faculty need to
figure out how to implement inquiry labs. Similarly, the retirement of a bio lab instructor
provided the space for more junior faculty and staff to implement inquiry labs.
Failures
● Neither the administrative leadership nor the adaptive leadership were consistently well
connected with existing management structures in the departments, e.g. curriculum
committees, department chairs.
16
● There were key, respected faculty in each department who were not part of the change
initiative, and had alternate visions of the main educational problems facing students. No
significant attempt was made to re-engage these key faculty.
● These failures meant that the reforms were not widely disseminated or adapted in other
courses that were taught in the departments.
Summary
We have implemented a large-scale reform of science labs on our campus. The vision was that
students would do science in their first two years and this been achieved by changing each
introductory science lab to use either inquiry labs or 5-6 week long research projects embedded.
The reforms affected over 12,000 students each year and may be one of the largest reforms of its
kind at a single university. Its impact has been to increase students’ conceptual understanding of
science topics and their efficacy, and to improve their understanding of the Nature of Science.
The first-year retention of STEM majors has increased from 75 to 79% over the course of the
project, though it is not possible to firmly claim that this was caused by the reform project.
The successes and failures of the project readily fit into a Complexity Leadership model of
emergent change, i.e. change that is not prescribed but is developed by faculty, postdocs, and
TAs in response to a broad vision. In our case, the broad vision is for students to do more science
in their first two years at college. The Complexity Leadership model highlights three key
leadership roles: administrative leadership to help set the conditions for change, adaptive
leadership as the work of individuals who invest time to jointly develop solutions to complex
problems, and enabling leadership that connects and disseminates innovations to the
organization. From the viewpoint of our change initiative, two shortcomings of the model are:
17
1. The model does not emphasize the impact of an organization’s culture and value system
(Fairweather 2008, Austin, 2011). For example what is the level of support for faculty from
their colleagues and department chair in spending time on the change and is this activity
valued both in respect and in compensation?
2. Different perspectives on teaching/learning were beneficial to some of our emergent
successes such as the different backgrounds in the research lab FLC. But clashes between
perspectives can impede progress toward the overall goal. Since the theory has a social
foundation, it should be possible to extend the model to include conflict resolution.
Despite these shortcomings, this model largely fits the experience of our case. Hence other
reform projects could use this theory to design emergent change at their university. Key to
success is the development of a shared vision of what education change is most needed and
providing faculty time and support to adapt this vision to local contexts. By adopting a model of
emergent change, universities should succeed in implementing research-based instructional
strategies at a large scale.
Acknowledgements This research was supported in part by a grant to Iowa State University
from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute through the Precollege and Undergraduate Science
Education Program.
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