(61d) Turbocharging “Sense of Belonging” in the Classroom Using Conocimiento: Towards Overcoming the “Problem of Scale Associated with Professor Time”

Sense of belonging is an intangible yet crucial element in chemical engineering classrooms¹. Several classroom longitudinal studies have shown that an improved sense of belonging in students is positively correlated with academic performance, retention, and persistence^1,2. In our previous work, we presented theory and practice of implementing the “Concocimiento Activity” in a senior chemical engineering classroom at The Ohio State University ³ . The Conocimiento activity is a group discussion wherein groups of 4 – 5 students meet with their professor and reflect on their experiences and journey over a 30-45 min discussion. The data presented in our previous work showed an overwhelming amount of evidence, based on both summative and formative feedback, that the Concocimiento activity helped increase and maintain a sense of belonging for chemical engineering students in the classroom.

A significant challenge identified in the previous study was labelled as the “problem of scale associated with professor time”³. For a class of 84 students, meeting with groups of 4 for 45-60 minutes each adds at least 15-20 hours to the professor's already busy schedule, which includes teaching, research, service, grading, and office hours. Necessity fuels innovation, and the drawback with our previous study inspired and motivated us to look for solutions to the “problem of scale associated with professor time” for conducting a Concocimiento activity in large classrooms (>70-80 students).

After that, the rest of our talk will focus on communicating our approaches to addressing the “problem of scale”, starting with a systematic literature review on various strategies and methods that could be applicable to addressing the “problem at scale” associated with Conocimiento activity. We will then provide details on various approaches that we have tried to overcome the “problem of scale associated with professor time”. Specifically, we will present on “design of our experiment” and “pre-post formative and summative” evaluation data for the following approaches:

Approach 1: Scaling Concocimiento with an intentional faculty-student luncheon. This approach included finding faculty volunteers and academic advisors to participate in a 45 min lunch and assigning tables for them to lead a Conocimiento activity with students in our class.

Approach 2: Scaling Concocimiento by having Undergrad Teaching Assistants (UGTA’s) lead a randomized portion of the student population through the Conocimiento activity.

Finally, we will present our Conocimiento work from last two semester . Specifically, we will look to present cross-institutional data with UIUC and OSU to see if the formative feedback trends are similar between the students at the two institutions and at different stages of their careers.

References

1) Hansen, M.J., Palakal, M.J. & White, L. The Importance of STEM Sense of Belonging and Academic Hope in Enhancing Persistence for Low-Income, Underrepresented STEM Students. Journal for STEM Educ Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41979-023-00096-8

2) Freeman, Tierra M., Lynley H. Anderman, and Jane M. Jensen. "Sense of belonging in college freshmen at the classroom and campus levels." The Journal of Experimental Education 75.3 (2007): 203-220.

3) Kathe, M., Bouton, B.,(2024, October). "Turbocharging Classroom Sense of Belonging Using the "Conocimiento Activity": Implementation Strategies, Assessment Results and Lesson's Learnt" In 2024 AIChE Annual Meeting. AIChE.