Reaching Students What Research Says About Effective Instruction in Undergraduate Science and Engineering (2015) / Chapter Skim
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2 Getting Started
2 Getting Started
Pages 29-52
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From page 29... ...
, a Michigan State University professor who has studied faculty rewards and strategies to improve student learning, "lies less in not knowing what works and more in getting people to use proven techniques." There are many understandable reasons why instructors or administrators may be daunted by the prospect of reorienting their courses or programs around research on learning. This chapter offers suggestions for how to get started, drawn from studies of instructional transformation and the experience of practitioners who have success fully incorporated research-based strategies into their own undergraduate teaching.
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From page 30... ...
"A shift in attitude is really profound in terms of underpinning change in practice," says Cathy Manduca,2 director of the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College, a national network for pro fessional development, curriculum, research on learning, and community building.
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Sara Brownell and Kimberly Tanner (2012) propose that scientists' professional identities may be "an invisible and underappreciated barrier to undergraduate science teaching reform" (p.
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From page 32... ...
. The steps of the model include reviewing existing research on teaching and learning; creating student learning goals; developing a hypothesis about ways to achieve these goals; defining measures of success; developing and implementing teaching practices within an experimental design; collecting and analyzing data; and reflecting, evaluating, and adjusting based on the evidence collected.
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From page 33... ...
While these and other models for transforming instruction differ in their specifics, they generally emphasize certain key steps: • Establish learning goals that define what students should know and be able to do by the end of a unit or a course. • Design, adopt, or adapt curriculum materials and instructional strategies that will help students achieve these goals.
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From page 34... ...
In addition to addressing concepts and content knowledge, learning goals might also focus on students' mastery of technical skills in a discipline; "soft skills" such as writing and communication; and affective qualities such as curiosity, motivation to learn a subject, and retention in a discipline. Learning goals should also "explicitly communicate the key ideas and the level at which students should understand them in operational terms," accord ing to Michelle Smith, a biology professor at the University of Maine, and Kathy Perkins, a physics professor at Colorado (2010)
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From page 35... ...
. BOX 2.1 Learning Goals from an Introduction to Modern Physics Course Course learning goal Background: A bunch of old curmudgeon engineers complain to the engineering curriculum committee that quantum mechanics is a waste of time for any engineering student to take, claiming that regular engineers only work on things that use classical (non-quantum)
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From page 36... ...
Faculty indicated that learning goals were useful in communicating course material to students and other faculty and creating course assessments. The value of learning goals depends not only on how well they have been developed, but also on how effectively they are used.
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typical class may also include short lectures with pho These goals not only signal to the students what tographs, video clips, and animation; open-ended they should understand by the end of the lesson, questions that require students to collaborate on but also shape how McConnell, a science education analyzing information and applying their learning to researcher as well as a geology professor, designs his real-world situations; and a "minute paper" in which curriculum, teaching strategies, and assessments. students reflect on the most important thing they learned that day.
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From page 38... ...
had been shown to improve student learning and Along the way they hit a few snags. "The first half increase student engagement in physics (Mazur, of the ConcepTests we made, we tried in class and 1997)
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with learning objectives, cies -- scientists, government agencies, businesses, ConcepTests, and exercises for active learning, many and the general public -- in the weeks preceding the of which McConnell uses in his own class. Mount St.
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range of geosciences courses at different types of As part of his research for the Geoscience institutions by examining pre- and post-test data Affective Research NETwork (GARNET) project, which from the Geoscience Concept Inventory (GCI)
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From page 41... ...
• Telling students explicitly what the learning goals are and reminding them often can reinforce what they need to study and make them more likely to buy into new ways of teaching. • The first steps of applying a scientific or engineering mindset to your teaching often include identifying any problems with your teaching, reviewing prior research on effective strategies, attending workshops or other developmental opportunities, and collaborating with colleagues who have similar educational interests.
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From page 42... ...
Many instructors who would like to try out active learning strategies are intimidated by what Robin Wright,10 an associate dean in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota, calls a "big misconception" -- namely, that faculty who have effectively taught a well-designed lecture course for several years "think they've got to throw all of that away and start from scratch." But that is not the approach she and her colleagues took when preparing to teach in a new building with classrooms designed especially to facilitate active student engagement. Rather, says Wright, they started by making students responsible for learning through homework some of the less demanding content that was previously included in lectures.
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Learning communities are an effective form of ongoing professional development that bring together instructors -- and in some cases, graduate students, post-docs, and others -- to learn about and try out new Getting Started 43
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From page 44... ...
They can exist within a department or an institution or through an external network, such as a disciplinary society, online resource center, or other professional organization. Some learning communities are forged by people who met at an initial professional development workshop and then made a commitment to help each other implement and expand on what they learned.
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From page 45... ...
"You have to figure out what works for you." When adapting materials, however, one must be careful to recognize and maintain the elements that research has shown to be critical to realize the improvements in student learning that others have achieved. Participating in Professional Development Most instructors who use research-based strategies in their courses participated in professional development about these strategies at some point in their careers, and some went on to lead professional development activities themselves.
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From page 46... ...
A wide array of professional development opportunities -- ranging from daylong workshops to fellowships extending over one year or more, and from efforts on one's local campus to large-scale national programs -- are available to instructors who want to learn more about research-based approaches to teaching and learning. These programs are sponsored by individual institutions, disciplin ary societies and professional organizations, networks of practitioners using a particular instructional approach, and other entities.
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From page 47... ...
the National Academies and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Summer Institute (SI) was "Teaching in the light" the first major national professional development When Michelle Withers, now a biology profes program for life sciences faculty.
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nesses in science processing and reasoning skills Evaluations of impact were a major stumbling block for many of these Surveys of the first five SI cohorts conducted before, students. "I designed an entire program to teach shortly after, one year after, and two years after these kinds of skills, and as a result, they went on their participation show a substantial increase in to become incredibly successful in introductory scientific teaching practices over time (Pfund et al., biology," Dirks explains.
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From page 49... ...
. workshop continued to be refined over time, says A study of the impact of professional develop- Dirks.d It is also noteworthy that SI alumni often ment on participants in the National Academies SI say that it took them three or more years of experiand a related professional development effort, the menting before they felt they could effectively use NSF-funded Faculty Institutes for Reforming Science learner-centered teaching strategies (Pfund et al., Teaching (FIRST II)
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From page 50... ...
suggest a model of "situated apprenticeships" in which instruc tors actively practice teaching strategies and critique each other's implementation through an ongoing peer-review process.16 Other options include reviewing videos of skilled instructors teaching in their classrooms with expert commentary, or reviewing videos of one's own teaching with feedback from a mentor. Evidence of the effectiveness of different types of professional development comes largely from self-reports from participants, which must be interpreted with caution, and in a few cases from more detailed types of follow-up and observa tions of instructional practices of former participants.
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Kortz began by attending a workshop for early career geosciences faculty offered by On the Cutting Edge, a professional development project of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. "That really opened my eyes," she says.
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From page 52... ...
Network www.cirtl.net Discipline-Based Education Research: Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering (National Research Council, 2012) Chapter 8: Translating Research into Teaching Practice: The Influence of Discipline-Based Education Research on Undergraduate Science and Engineering Instruction The Science Education Resource Center (SERC)
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