NRT-IGE: Flipping a Foundational Interdisciplinary Graduate Curriculum While Strengthening Connections Outside Academia

NRT-IGE: Flipping a Foundational Interdisciplinary Graduate Curriculum While Strengthening Connections Outside Academia

Traditional approaches to training first-year graduate students in interdisciplinary fields typically use instructional methods that do not reflect the individualized needs of the students. The course structure additionally teaches laboratory and field methods separately, divorcing context from theory and skills. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award in the Innovations of Graduate Education (IGE) Track to the University of Minnesota Duluth will pilot and test a re-design of the first-year graduate studies in limnology. Limnology is an interdisciplinary field that draws graduate students with backgrounds in chemistry, physics, biology, geology, and other disciplines. Thus, an integrated approach that builds from basic concepts toward each of these specialties separately and together is needed. The multi-faceted model will include a flipped-classroom active-learning environment, cohort building, and research experience that involves community partners. This project will make online materials freely available so they can be adapted and utilized by other reform efforts targeting first-year graduate instruction, particularly in interdisciplinary programs.

A team of professional scientists and educational faculty members with the Large Lakes Observatory will collaborate to establish measurable learning targets involving both scientific knowledge and broader professional skills. Based upon these learning targets, a variety of formative and summative assessment measures will be created and used to help guide the implementation of this project's graduate course material. Students will access course materials and resources outside of class hours, including videotaped lectures, interactive website content, and other online materials. Projects of different durations and scopes will be designed for students to work on inside the classroom as a means to apply information learned from the online course materials. A final capstone project will be created by involving one or more community partners in the field of water resources or water quality, including private companies, government laboratories, and non-profit organizations. These community partners will propose a real-world challenge that students will work on as a team to design solutions and develop deliverables. This new educational model will serve to integrate and improve delivery of basic concepts, build teamwork and communication skills among the students, and further connect the academic community to local partners.

The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new, potentially transformative, and scalable models for STEM graduate education training. The Innovations in Graduate Education Track is dedicated solely to piloting, testing, and evaluating novel, innovative, and potentially transformative approaches to graduate education.