Reaching Students: What Research Says About Effective Instruction in Undergraduate Science and Engineering.

摘要

If you teach science or engineering or have a strong interest in these disciplines, your undergraduate years were likely a turning point. Perhaps the initial excitement you felt as an adolescent when you observed the luminous clouds of the Orion Nebula through your new telescope grew into a desire for an astronomy career in an undergraduate course when you learned how and why this nebula is a place where stars are born. Or maybe a college field trip to a Paleozoic rock outcrop opened your mind to the immensity and longevity of the forces at work in Earth’s formation and spurred you to pursue geo-sciences. Whatever the inspiration, you persisted through excellent courses and lackluster ones, through stimulating assignments and tedious ones, to complete an undergraduate major in science or engineering and go on to master a discipline. Based on your own undergraduate experiences, you may assume that most students should be able to learn science the way you learned science, but that is not always the case. For too many students, the undergraduate years are the turnoff point. A single course with poorly designed instruction or curriculum can stop a student who was considering a science or engineering major in her tracks. More than half of the students who start out in science or engineering switch to other majors or do not finish college at all. Maybe they failed a crucial prerequisite course, or found little to engage their interest in their introductory courses, or failed to see the relevance of what they were being taught. For non-majors, an introductory course that confirms their preconception that they are “bad at science may be the last science course they ever take. Evidence from research on learning and teaching in science and engineering suggests that a large part of the problem lies in the way these courses are traditionally taught—through lectures and reading assignments, note-taking and memorization, and laboratories with specific instructions and a predetermined result.