Kelly Hogan, a professor in the Biology department, said she was inspired to change her teaching style after a colleague presented her with data that showed discrepancies in class performance. Semesters later, she published her findings and will continue to experiment with her class structure.
“I saw that we had some really bad failure rates when they were disaggregated by race and ethnicity,” said Hogan, “that we had a real problem with underrepresented minorities.”
Hogan said increasing the retention rates of minority students is important on a national level. President Obama has called for 1 million new STEM graduates in the next ten years, and simply raising retention rates could account for three-quarters of that number, Hogan said.
“We have extremely low retention for our underrepresented minority students,” she said. “We need to start including them. They need to be part of science.”
Hogan said her study doesn’t specifically target any groups of students, but rather aims to improve the performance and retention of all students, which ultimately levels the playing field.
“The achievement gap that was there in my own class years ago, is no longer there for first-generation students,” Hogan said. “And the achievement gap that was much bigger for our black students has now been halved.”
Hogan’s students are expected to learn the content on their own before coming to class through guided readings.
A low-structure course, in contrast, might be laid out with daily lectures, two midterms and a final, Hogan said.