Student Surveys

Students’ Learning Experiences and Graduation Exit Surveys in EOAS

The Students’ Learning Experiences Survey (SLES) was developed by the UBC Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences CWSEI program and deployed in 48 EOAS undergraduate courses taught in fall 2013 and spring 2014 as part of the impact assessment of the CWSEI. Results based on 2489 student respondents in these courses (representing 4871 enrolled students) are reported in a pair of articles by Francis Jones: Impact Assessment of a Department-wide Science Education Initiative using Students’ Perceptions of Teaching and Learning Experiences from 2016, and Comparing student, instructor, classroom and institutional data to evaluate a seven-year department-wide science education initiative from 2017, both published in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education (preprints available here).

Meanwhile, the EOAS Graduation Exit Survey measured student experiences and goals at the program level, and was run with graduating students in the department for 2009 through 2015. Selected results appear in the 2017 Comparing... article mentioned above as one of the other data sources on student experience.

Learning Attitudes about Science Surveys

These "C-LASS" and similar surveys characterize students' attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs about learning a particular science and contrast that with expert responses. They are typically given pre and post instruction (i.e. given at the start of a term and near the end) to measure the effect of a course on these attitudes.

For recommendations in deploying these types of surveys, see Madsen, McKagan, and Sayre's Best Practices for Administering Attitudes and Beliefs Surveys in Physics (2020 article in The Physics Teacher).

Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Surveys (CLASS-Phys, CLASS-Chem, CLASS-Bio)

Originally developed at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) to characterize students' attitudes and beliefs about learning physics, the survey has been adapted for use in chemistry and biology.

Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS)

Developed at CU Boulder as a broadly applicable assessment tool for undergraduate physics lab courses. At the beginning and end of the semester, the E-CLASS is used to characterize students views about their strategies, habits of mind, and attitudes when doing experiments in lab classes.

Student Perceptions about Earth Sciences Survey (SPESS)

A survey developed at UBC to characterize students' perceptions and attitudes about learning earth sciences.

Mathematics Attitudes and Perceptions Survey (MAPS)

An adaptation of the CLASS developed at UBC to characterize students' attitudes and perceptions about learning mathematics. Development paper: Code, W., Merchant, S., Maciejewski, W., Thomas, M., & Lo, J. (2016). The Mathematics Attitudes and Perceptions Survey: an instrument to assess expert-like views and dispositions among undergraduate mathematics students. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology (IJMEST), http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0020739X.2015.1133854 (Word docx version of survey | article preprint).

The Computing Attitudes Survey (CAS)

An adaptation of the CLASS for computer science. It was collaboratively developed by UBC and University of Nebraska Computer Science education researchers. See: Dorn, B. and Tew, A. E. (2015). Empirical Validation and Application of the Computing Attitudes Survey. Computer Science Education, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2015.1014142