Central Valley Region Interdisciplinary Symposium on Education Research

The Center for Engaged Teaching and Learning at UC Merced offers the Students Assessing Teaching and Learning (SATAL) Program as a mechanism to support the community of instructors working to enhance teaching and learning on campus. SATAL involves trained undergraduates in the data collection, analysis, and reporting. Instructors can partner with SATAL to assess the teaching and learning experiences of students in their classes by implementing different protocols such as Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS). The purpose of this poster is to share the rich information instructors can derive from the COPUS implementation to advance student engagement. The SATAL staff share COPUS results as a fruitful mechanism to document active learning practices complemented with guidelines and suggestion notes. Also, SATAL showcases actions taken based on the COPUS data received and impact on the instructors’ experiences as a responsive approach to advance student engagement. Providing wait time, using worksheets, diversifying active learning activities, and adding clicker questions were among the changes introduced by instructors. Moreover, SATAL addresses how the presented assessment practices can be utilized for different purposes apart from classroom assessment, such action research and tenure and promotion.

Riley Whitmer, SATAL Intern, UC Merced

Shaira Vargas, Graduate Student, UC Merced