Roles matter: Graduate student perceptions of active learning in the STEM courses they take and those they teach

Abstract

Despite many calls to reform undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education to incorporate active learning into classes, there has been little attention paid to graduate level classrooms or courses taught by graduate students. Here, we set out to understand if and how STEM graduate students perceptions of active learning change in the classes they take versus those they teach by administering surveys to STEM graduate students at our institution. We found that graduate students had taken relatively few graduate level classes using active learning and they felt that more time should devoted to active learning in the courses they were taking. Teaching assistants felt that they were devoting the right amount of class time to active learning in the classes they taught. Graduate students also felt that they were using teaching methods in the classes they taught that were different from those they thought should be used when teaching undergraduates and were different from how they preferred to learn when taking classes. These findings suggest that graduate students perceptions of teaching and learning changed based on their role in the classroom, which have implications for graduate level course work and professional development programs.