Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and.
Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2021 Dec;20(4):ar63. doi: 10.1187/cbe.21-02-0039.
We examine the impact of logy entoring and ngagement (BIOME) near-peer mentorship on 437 first-year undergraduate students over three cohort years. The BIOME course consists of ten, 50-minute meetings where groups of six first-year mentees meet with an upper-division student mentor to discuss topics including metacognition, growth mindset, and effective study strategies. We employed a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the impact of BIOME on mentee academic outcomes. Initial ethnographic analysis revealed that BIOME influenced student study methods, approaches to academic challenges, and use of campus learning communities. We then constructed a novel, program-specific instrument to measure the implementation of these habits, a construct we named "academic habit complexity." Regression analysis supported the hypothesis that enrollment in BIOME leads to students using more diverse approaches than their peers. Enrollment in BIOME, and the associated development of academic habit complexity, is related to higher course grades in General Chemistry, a biology major prerequisite. Finally, students participating in BIOME demonstrated improved short-term student retention as measured by increased enrollment in the subsequent prerequisite General Chemistry course. These results suggest that course-based near-peer mentorship may be an effective and scalable approach that can promote student academic success.
我们考察了日志指导和参与（BIOME）近邻指导对三个队列中的 437 名本科一年级学生的影响。BIOME 课程包括十次，每次 50 分钟的会议，六名一年级学员与一名高年级学生导师组成小组，讨论元认知、成长思维和有效学习策略等主题。我们采用混合方法评估 BIOME 对学员学术成果的影响。初步的民族志分析表明，BIOME 影响学生的学习方法、应对学术挑战的方法和利用校园学习社区的方式。然后，我们构建了一个新颖的、专门针对该计划的工具来衡量这些习惯的实施情况，我们将其命名为“学术习惯复杂性”。回归分析支持了以下假设，即参加 BIOME 课程的学生比同龄人更倾向于采用多样化的方法。参加 BIOME 课程以及随之而来的学术习惯复杂性的发展与普通化学课程的更高成绩相关，普通化学是生物学专业的先修课程。最后，参加 BIOME 课程的学生在后续的普通化学先修课程中的注册人数增加，表明他们的短期学生保留率有所提高。这些结果表明，基于课程的近邻指导可能是一种有效且可扩展的方法，可以促进学生的学业成功。
