Enhancing Learning Power in First-Year Courses for Students Majoring in STEM Disciplines

Abstract

Academic programs targeted for first-time students can help their persistence in STEM majors. Our project, ASCEND STEM, included a first-year experience (FYE) designed to offer students the skills that would help them successfully traverse potential barriers to academic success. In the FYE, we sought to strengthen the learning power, improve the academic achievements, and increase the postsecondary success of first-time, full-time freshmen majoring in a STEM discipline. Two FYE were offered—one to undeclared majors in engineering and the other to science and mathematics majors. Both courses tested whether the offering of literacy skill building in the context of discipline knowledge acquisition strengthened learning power (as measured by the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory) and asked whether this could affect academic success and persistence within the STEM major. We found that both the integration of literacy skill building concepts into a newly developed course that focused on quantitative reasoning concepts for science and mathematics majors and the pairing of a literacy skill building course with an existing discipline-based course that focused on project-based learning in four areas of engineering improved learning power. Increases in learning power were a valid predictor of improved grades and persistence in engineering where a high-quality control group was available.