Hypothesis
Scaffolded Approach
Faculty Development & Curricular Revision
Assessment & Data Collection
Broader Impacts
Project Hypothesis
The ISCAR Project addresses three primary research questions related to undergraduate STEM education, with particular interest paid to students from educationally disadvantaged school districts, rural school districts, first-generation college students, and students from low- income families:
(1) Can archaeology field research improve STEM competencies for undergraduate students?
(2) Does a scaffolded approach to archaeological research maximize STEM learning outcomes, especially for students in the target population?
(3) What impact does archaeological research have on undergraduate academic success for all students, particularly the target populations?
The PI hypothesizes that engagement in archaeological field research enhances undergraduates’ acquisition of STEM competencies and positively influences academic success. Undergraduate students who participate in the project are anticipated to have a decided advantage over their peers in terms of their ability to identify, analyze, and find solutions to complex problems; to evaluate the utility of various research approaches; and to clearly disseminate the results of their research, both in scientific writing and through public presentations. Students who complete robust field research experiences are expected to be retained at higher rates than their peers who do not. Project results will support or disprove claims that archaeological fieldwork improves STEM competencies in students.
Scaffolded Approach
Student participation in the ISCAR project begins with recruitment efforts that feed students into a structured sequence of anthropology courses and fieldwork opportunities that will allow for a scaffolded approach to building and testing students’ STEM competencies.
ANTH 202: Archaeology, serves as the first rung of the scaffold and the main entry-point for student participation in the ISCAR project. ANTH 202 introduces students to the theories and methods of archaeological research. After participating in ANTH 202, students will participate in ANTH 350: Advanced Archaeology, with a focus on critical “pre-fieldwork” investigation skills. Following ANTH 350, the next rungs of the scaffold include a four-week archaeological field school (ANTH 296: Field Methods in Archaeology), followed by eight weeks of paid intensive field research for select students.
Subsequently, students may take ANTH 280: Laboratory Methods in Archaeology to focus on post-excavation analytical methods. Additionally, one or two students will be selected to be paid Student Research Associates (SRAs). SRAs will analyze results of field research projects, complete a technical report of their findings, present their findings at a professional meeting, and draft an article for peer review.
Course Progression
Student participation in the project is not static, and the sequence of courses allows individual- level comparison between students who participate in project courses and those who do not, as well as levels of engagement in fieldwork between those who participate in 12 weeks of research, four weeks of research, or no research at all.
Faculty Development & Curricular Revision
Faculty participants will attend a three- day workshop to help them align STEM competencies with content delivery, skills development, and assessment in all project courses and fieldwork. The workshop will employ the Learning Improvement by Design (LID) model developed at James Madison University (JMU) by the Center for Faculty Innovation and the Center for Assessment & Research Studies. LID’s premise is that collaborative units of programmatic faculty, and faculty development and assessment specialists, can lead assessment and curricular interventions that evince improved student learning.
Using information garnered from the LID workshop, faculty will embed and examine competencies within ANTH classes and related field research through a curricular development process at the outset of the project. The STEM Competency model adopted for the ISCAR project follows that presented by Jang in “Identifying 21st century STEM competencies using workplace data” in the Journal of Science Education and Technology.
Assessment & Data Collection
Multiple instruments including standard tests, surveys, and rubrics, will be employed to track improvements in participants’ acquisition of STEM competencies, persistence in future STEM-related education, STEM confidence, and STEM identity. Data collection tools with be developed and refined throughout the course of the project. Assessment tools will be a valuable, sharable product resulting from the project.
Broader Impacts
By building upon the evidence base that supports STEM learning and undergraduate research experiences, this project will challenge the overgeneralization that a STEM-literate workforce is tied to traditional STEM disciplines. The efficacy of this model could bolster undergraduate research in social sciences as an effective technique for engaging non-traditional STEM majors in STEM learning and engaging educationally disadvantaged students, particularly those who are rural, low-income and/or first generation to enter STEM professions.
