The CLEAR Initiative

Research project:

The CLEAR Initiative: To Foster Digital Changes in University-Level STEM Education and Faculty Development by Promoting Active Learning　

Principal Investigator

Dr. Jingjing Lin

Host University

Toyohashi University of Technology (TUT), Japan

Funding:

Toyohashi University of Technology 2021 Education and Research Revitalization Grant (豊橋技術科学大学2021年度教育研究活性化経費)

Human-related research approval

After being reviewed by the Research Ethics Review Board for Humans, it has been approved by the President of the Toyohashi University of Technology. Check the approval letter.

Research Goals and Significance

The goals of this project are to identify active learning strategies by high performance instructors in the online teaching environment, to test the effectiveness of a novel instruction model – CLEAR (create, learn, extend, apply, and remember), and to evaluate the active learning experience of students online. The research will provide guidance for promoting active learning in the online teaching environment, offer research evidence to prove or disapprove the CLEAR model as a new instruction model, and to test its potential to foster digital changes in undergraduate-level education and faculty development.

Japan is still under the strong influence of the pandemic and TUT in a while will continue to rely on online instruction to carry on with its educational activities. Therefore, to improve the online presentation of courses on the course management system and to integrate active learning into the online classrooms will increase the feasibility of self-regulated learning and raise the engagement level for at-home students. It will enable TUT to join the global conversation on the during-/post-pandemic education and contribute TUT experience and stories.

In short, the goals of this project are:

Identify active learning strategies by high-performance instructors in the online teaching environment.
Test the effectiveness of a novel instruction model – CLEAR.
Evaluate the active learning experience of students online.

Research plan

Inspired by active learning this research explores the potential of a novel mental model CLEAR as a new approach to foster digital changes in undergraduate-level education in the online teaching and learning environment. The detailed research plan can be viewed below under Research activities.

About CLEAR model

Lin, J. (2021). The CLEAR Framework to Implement Active Learning in STEM Education. 2021 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology & Education (TALE). Dec.5-8, 2021. Wuhan, China. Accepted. Read the preprint version of this research.