Student-staff relationships
A positive course climate and strong student-instructor relationships can enhance student self-efficacy in undergraduate STEM courses by fostering a more supportive and engaging learning environment. Be approachable, available, and attentive to students’ needs.
Employ a conversational tone and use accessible language.
Create ample opportunities for instructor-student interactions, both in whole-class and one-on-one scenarios.
Allocate time for student questions and concerns.
Pedagogical practice
Adopting student-centred pedagogical practices is an effective way to promote student learning and enhance student self-efficacy. Employ active learning pedagogies in your classes, especially for subjects commonly perceived as challenging, such as mathematics and physics.
Provide students with collaborative and peer-based learning opportunities.
Proactively provide individual attention and feedback to students in science laboratories to help strengthen the positive effects of active learning on student confidence.
Structure tutorial classes around mentored individual thinking and problem-solving activities.
Certain teaching and learning practices may have a detrimental effect on student self-efficacy by heightening levels of stress and anxiety. Avoid cold calling in undergraduate courses.
Avoid using personal response systems for timed and graded tasks.
Precede active learning activities in science laboratories with sufficient instruction, especially in laboratories in which the students have differential levels of previous experience.
Assessment
Most students favour continuous assessment over exams and express a greater confidence in their ability to perform well on continual assessment tasks compared to exams. Design your courses to include non-exam modes of assessment.
Utilise frequent, low-stake assessments to promote positive assessment experiences and help students build a robust sense of subject-related confidence over time.
Supplement…
How do pedagogical practices impact students in UG STEM. Our study published this week looked at relationship between gender and self-efficacy. Congrats to Gintarė Lübeck for the research and collaboration led by @cbs-lecturer.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Key Recommends:
