Motivating Learners: Improving Student Outcomes in Math through Online Faculty Professional Development

Program Abstract: This study reveals that a brief, intensive, evidence-based, online professional development course focused on equipping mathematics faculty with knowledge and tools to support student motivation can have downstream effects on student learning outcomes. We offered the Motivating Learners Course to a cohort of math faculty from a single department at a large Hispanic Serving (HSI) state university in California during the 2022-2023 academic year. Information about the Motivating Learners Course was distributed widely across the department and instructors volunteered to participate (n = 25). Using propensity score matching to control for pre-existing differences between students of faculty who participated in the course and a control group of comparison faculty (n = 35), we found that the probability of passing the course was 76.4% for students whose instructors participated in the course compared to 69.5% for students whose instructors who did not participate in the course (h = 0.16).