Using Science Education Gateways to improve undergraduate STEM education: The QUBES Platform as a case study

TL;DR

The cyberinfrastructure provided by the QUBES platform has the capacity to broaden participation in scholarship around teaching and learning and can help to lower faculty barriers to the adoption of reform practices, and it is called for further exploration of the roles of cyberinf infrastructure in undergraduate STEM education.

Abstract

The QUBES platform was conceived as a "science education gateway" and designed to accelerate innovation in undergraduate STEM education. The technical infrastructure was purpose built to provide more equitable access to professional resources, support learning that reflects authentic science, and promote open education practices. Four platform services (OER Library Access; Professional Learning; Partner Support; and Customizable Workspaces) support overlapping faculty user communities, provide multiple points of entry, and enable manifold use case scenarios. The integrated nature of the platform makes it possible to collect, curate, and disseminate a diverse array of reform resources in a scalable and sustainable manner. We believe that the QUBES platform has the capacity to broaden participation in scholarship around teaching and learning and, furthermore, that it can help to lower faculty barriers to the adoption of reform practices. The role of cyberinfrastructure in undergraduate STEM education is generally underappreciated and warrants further exploration.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: QUBES Science Education Gateway and its Four Platform Services. The central element, labeled QUBES Science Education Gateway, represents the underlying technical infrastructure that supports an integrated, customizable online platform. The four platform services (Professional Learning; OER Library Access; Project Support; and Customizable Workspaces) support overlapping faculty user communities, provide multiple points of entry, and enable manifold use case scenarios. Broadly, the gateway can be described as both a platform for hosting diverse professional activities and as a highly curated repository of teaching and learning resources. This dual functionality supports a virtuous cycle where faculty engagement with STEM reform helps them generate new products which are then captured and curated within the gateway, making those resources accessible to the broader community.
• Figure 2: Example ongoing and future QUBES platform development projects. Each of the four panels represent ongoing or future development to extend the functionality of the QUBES platform to further support faculty engagement in scholarship around teaching and learning. (A) Software tools involve implementing scalable and robust hosting of cloud based modeling and analysis tools in a way that is tightly integrated with OER published in the library. (B) Teacher portfolios refer to the design of an integrated system for collecting, sharing, and contextualizing faculty teaching scholarship as a means to document activities for consideration in hiring, promotion, and tenure. (C) Custom publishing involves streamlining the deployment of manuscript management workflows, and specialized publication collections. (D) Discipline based education research support describes a suite of tools that would facilitate collaboration around classroom research and studies of reform practices.