Proposal Title

Active learning and gendered achievement gaps in STEM

Session Type

Presentation

Room

HSB 35

Start Date

4-7-2019 8:30 AM

Keywords

assessment, gendered achievement, active learning

Primary Threads

Teaching and Learning Science

Abstract

Although gender gaps have been a major concern in male-dominated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines such as physics and engineering, the numerical dominance of female students in biology has supported the assumption that gender disparities do not exist at the undergraduate level in life sciences. Using data from 23 large introductory biology classes for majors, we examine two measures of gender disparity in biology: academic achievement and participation in whole-class discussions. We also examined if, and to what extent, the characteristics of instructor-generated tests impact the exam performance of males and females in introductory biology courses. We collected 4810 students’ exam scores from 87 unique exams taken across three years of the introductory biology series. We determined the median Bloom’s level and the percentage of constructed-response questions for each exam. I will report on gender gaps observed in these groups and possible explanations for our findings and how they might impact how we assess our students.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS
 
Jul 4th, 8:30 AM

Active learning and gendered achievement gaps in STEM

HSB 35

Although gender gaps have been a major concern in male-dominated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines such as physics and engineering, the numerical dominance of female students in biology has supported the assumption that gender disparities do not exist at the undergraduate level in life sciences. Using data from 23 large introductory biology classes for majors, we examine two measures of gender disparity in biology: academic achievement and participation in whole-class discussions. We also examined if, and to what extent, the characteristics of instructor-generated tests impact the exam performance of males and females in introductory biology courses. We collected 4810 students’ exam scores from 87 unique exams taken across three years of the introductory biology series. We determined the median Bloom’s level and the percentage of constructed-response questions for each exam. I will report on gender gaps observed in these groups and possible explanations for our findings and how they might impact how we assess our students.