Phase 2 of Project ADAPT involved recruiting several hundred Biology faculty to take part in an online survey that included multiple between-subjects experiments (see Table 1). The experiments occurred in separate waves and all were pre-registered on AsPredicted.org. The aim of this phase was to identify which step(s) of the decision-making process was amenable to different messaging and resulted in greater self-reported expectations for implementing the utility-value intervention in one’s classroom. Specifically, faculty were randomly assigned to an experimental condition which presented information about the utility-value intervention through a short animated video as well as static resources reiterating the particular experimental manipulation targeting a step of the decision process. This series of experiments took place between the fall of 2019 and the summer of 2020 with over 450 faculty participants and helped us to answer our second research question (and its sub questions outlined in Table 1).
Research Question 2: What theory-informed strategies maximize faculty’s positive attitudes toward, and long-term adoption of, the utility value intervention within their introductory biology course?
In part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we modified our fourth and final input “knowing how to intervene” to help us understand in what ways the pandemic – and the necessitated instructional changes – impacted faculty decisions to intervene in addressing underrepresentation. This also afforded the opportunity to pilot the optimized messaging from the previous three model inputs. Results revealed that messaging did not have a significant effect on faculty’s self-reported likelihood of adopting the UVI in their classrooms. In fact, reported value for this intervention was high across all conditions, however, motivation to actually implement the intervention depended on other factors such as faculty and institutional characteristics. These factors were explored more fully in Phase 3.