Kurt Williams
I'm a STEM education researcher passionate about equity in higher ed and the roles data can play in serving our communities' educational needs. PhD student at Momsen Lab at NDSU.
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Research
Building better postsecondary education systems
My projects in this area focus on providing better understanding of college students, their experiences, and their needs. Even as the financial and demographic landscape of higher education has shifted over recent decades, the model of who should be considered the "traditional" college student has stayed the same. Designing postsecondary STEM education programs that are equitable and effective requires reckoning with the ways that material precarity and competing demands on students' time shape the college experience today.
Undergraduate biology curriculum and assessment
The development of constructivist theories of learning has supported innovations in instructional approaches in undergraduate STEM, including active learning. However, much remains to be discovered about how to best support undergraduate STEM learning in practice. My projects in this area have have explored questions about how assessment and feedback practices influence students' learning in undergraduate biology.
Publications
- Harding RLS et al. (2021). "What do students know about evolution by natural selection after a non-majors geology course? An analysis of student responses to open-ended questions." Journal of Geoscience Education, 69(3), 253-264.
- Bailey EG et al. (2021). "The retention benefits of cumulative versus non-cumulative midterms in introductory biology may depend on students' reasoning skills." PLOS ONE, 16(4), e0250143.
- Williams KR et al. (2021). "Teaching Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium using Population-Level Punnett Squares: Facilitating Calculation for Students with Math Anxiety." CBE—Life Sciences Education, 20(2), ar22.
- Bailey EG et al. (2020). "Female In-Class Participation and Performance Increase With More Female Peers and/or a Female Instructor in Life Sciences Courses." CBE—Life Sciences Education, 19(3), ar30.
- Wiltbank et al. (2019). "Student perceptions and use of feedback during active learning: A new model from repeated stimulated recall interviews." Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(3), 431-448.
- Wiltbank et al. (2019). "Contrasting Cases: Students' Experiences in an Active-Learning Biology Classroom." CBE—Life Sciences Education, 18(3), ar33.