Home
Ethnography & Evaluation Research (E&ER) is an independent research unit at the 鶹Ѱ with a distinguished history of building knowledge aboutscience, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and careers, and a tradition of communicating this work effectively with practitioners. Our workhas helped to shape reforms in undergraduate STEM education for over 30 years.
Collectively, our research team is multi-disciplinary, STEM-savvy, andskilled in conducting and sharing research and evaluation to help faculty and institutionsimprove their STEM education practices. E&ER team members have also studied issues in health, social justice,the workforce, and the legal system.
To expand our capabilities and connect our findings to practice, E&ER draws on a network of colleagues and collaborators in education, government, research, and evaluation. Our work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Noyce Foundation, the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the Educational Advancement Foundation, and through contracts with colleges, universities, laboratories, and other organizations. At 鶹ѰBoulder, E&ER is housed within theCenter to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS).
New from E&ER
⚠️ Boring but important ⚠️Links to documents across this site were updated (3/2025) after a platform change to all 鶹ѰBoulder websites. Please let us know if you stumble upon a missing link or need something you can't find!
June 2025: Several E&ER people took part in the , focused on aligning change efforts across higher education. and presented sessions on their work with Departmental Action Teams, and Sandra Laursen presented on for transforming teaching evaluation, and on for change leadership teams.
February 2025: E&ER scholars presented at the RUME conference, Research on Undergraduate Mathematics Education, in Alexandria, VA. Jenny Valadez Fraire shared a poster on evaluating online professional development. Nancy Kress shared a poster analyzing teaching changes by math instructors in response to the COVID pandemic. And Sandra Laursen presented a talk on using student surveys to measure departmental change in STEM instruction, work done with Tim Archie, and a , "On whales, warblers, and pedagogy:Knowing, doing, and measuring in studies of college teaching in mathematics," about our efforts to measure teaching in order to know if it is changing over time.
October 2024: on community college biology instructors' uptake of evidence-based teaching practices, led by Tim Archie and out now in CBE Life Sciences Education.
October 2023: Together with colleagues from the , Sandra Laursen contributed to about online professional development for future STEM faculty, through two MOOCs on evidence-based teaching. We analyzed participation, self-reported outcomes, and the affordances of the MOOC-centered learning communities for supporting learners.
March 2023: Thrilled to share this on analyzing classroom observation data from segmented and holistic protocols, led by Tim Weston.Check it out in the International Journal of STEM Education!
December 2022:We have a chapter in the newly published . Our chapter, "The Cycle of Inquiry: Building Effective Evaluation Relationships to Support Continuous Improvement of Faculty Development Initiatives," was led by Chuck Hayward. The handbook has an impressive author list and a lot of great topics; check it out at the link and read our chapterhere.
June 2022: on two-year college (2YC) biology classes: What evidence-based instructional practices benefit 2YC students, which approaches do 2YC instructors use, and what supports or barriers do they encounter in doing so? Sarah Wiseand colleagues offer some answers from literature and instructor interviews.
May 2022: Worth the wait!E&ERcollaborated on this on inquiry-based learning for math educators. told you that these workshops work; here Yoshinobu et al. (2022) explain why.
May 2022:The of the ADVANCE Journal celebratestwo decades of this ground-breaking program to advance gender equity on STEM faculties. Sue Rosser and Sandra Laursen reviewedthe ADVANCE program's accomplishments, progress, and challenges for the future in.
April 2022: Delighted toannounce a led by Tim Archie in PLOS One! Drawing on a ten-year data set, we use a structural equation model based on the theory of planned behavior to see how professional development influenced teaching practice. Participation in a significant, multi-day workshopwas themajor influence on instructors' uptake of research-based teaching practices, with a boost fromsome contextual factors too.
July 2021:Our new paper, led by Tim Weston, examines the importance of time sampling in using classroom observations to study teaching practice. Turns out it takes a lot of observing to fairly characterizeteaching across a whole course—especially when instructors use active learning approaches, which make class time more variable.Check out in the American Journal of Evaluation (Online First).
May 2021:We are pleased to share new results from analyses led by Tim Archie on the outcomes of professional development workshops on inquiry-based learning for college math instructors. Well-designed intensive workshops make a difference! Pick your format: at the STEM for All Video Showcase, at the AIBL website, poster from the AAC&U 2020 STEM ed conference, and from the 2021 Joint Math Meetings. More good stuff coming soon!
November 2020: Check out our new book,Building Gender Equity in the Academy: Institutional Strategies for Change,by Sandra Laursen and Ann E. AustinfromJohns Hopkins University Press.This handbook is based in research about ADVANCE Institutional Transformation effortsandaimed at busy academic leaderswho seek evidence-based strategies to improve institutional environments for academic women.We are excited about thepotential for this work to reach people in positions to lead strategic institutional change! Check outmore resources related to the bookhere.
September 2020: The coauthored volume,is now available from Springer. This work is a follow-up study of STEM majors' switching and persistence, conductedat five of the original sites studied two decades ago inTalking about Leaving (1997).
June 2020: :An overview of research by Sandra Laursen and E&ER colleagues about learning and teaching in college mathematics classrooms that use inquiry-based learning (IBL) approaches.This (23 min.) places our team'sworkin context with other literature about active learning and equitable classroom environments, in support of instructors new to inquiry-based mathematics education (IBME).
August 2019: is now available! The report draws on scholarly reviews and practitioner discussions tocapture a snapshot of the current state of research-based reform in undergraduate STEM instruction. It identifieskey levers for change usedto reach this state, and it suggests additional leversfor fostering further change in the next decade. The project was led by Sandra Laursen for AAAS, with support from NSF and HHMI.
February 2019: Check out the two-volume special issue of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, with a raft of good papers on the NSF ADVANCE program (, ). Sandra Laursen and Kris De Welde, College of Charleston, have a paper analyzing .
February 2019: Excited to have a with Chris Rasmussen, San Diego State,appear in IJRUME!
November 2018: is out this month. Sandra Laursen and collaborator Ann Austin of Michigan State have a chapter in this volume.
September 2018:We're proud to have chipped in on the collaborative project that produced the new volume,. Check it out!
July 2018: We have two new papers out this summer, both on communities formed around inquiry-based learning in mathematics: Hayward & Laursen on after an IBL workshop, and Haberler, Laursen & Hayward on . Check 'em out!
June 2017: The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released its report on E&ER's Sandra Laursen was a plenary speaker at this workshop, with Paul Hernandez of West Virginia University.
April 2017:We're honored to have our piece on fundamental tensions of undergraduate research included in a new compilation of "greatest hits" fromChangemagazine,Edited by long-time Change editor Peg Miller, this volume focuses on experiences that change college students' lives. Check it out!
February 2017: The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released its report on. E&ER's Heather Thiry was part of the committee that prepared this report.
March 2014: The StratEGIC Toolkithas launched! The Toolkitoffers research-based advice about strategic interventions useful in organizational change to enhance the representation, involvement and success of women scholars in STEM fields.
Fall 2013:We contributed to a new publication from AAAS on(2013). The report discusses the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches to measuring undergraduate teaching practices, including faculty and student surveys, faculty interviews, classroom observations, portfolios, and other artifacts.
