Science Teaching Matters

An article in today's New York Times compares the sense of science education crisis in the post-Sputnik era and now.

It's a good general-interest update piece that pulls together a lot of the key current issues:

• We need more and better science teachers in high-school classrooms (coincidentally, that's a current MnSCU initiative: More and Better STEM Teachers).
• Teaching methods in science need broadscale improvement: too many memorization-based approaches, not enough conceptual and hands-on work.
• The sequence of science education: it presents the arguments of the "physics first" scientists, who say that what made sense in the 19th century (biology, chemistry, then physics) is upside down, and based on the idea that biology is a "descriptive" science. (The American Association of Physics Teachers articulates this approach at http://www.aapt.org/Policy/physicsfirst.cfm).
  
• A lot of disagreement about what the problems are.

The piece got me sifting through the dregs of my own files on STEM. Almost a decade ago, in 1999, Gibbs and Fox wrote an article in Scientific American, "The False Crisis in Science Education," that summed up the then-current sense of angst, and argued that there were really two problems underlying the "crisis:"
1. General science education in elementary and postsecondary schools isn't focused on science that is useful to most people in their adult lives, and
2. There are plenty of college students prepared and willing to take on advanced science education, but they get weeded out in gatekeeper introductory courses. The shortage is thus "controlled by universities, not by secondary schools."

As the NYT article notes, the "current" crisis has been roiling since at least 1983 and "A Nation at Risk." It will probably continue on bubbling until we can agree on what the problems really are.

Moodlin'

One of our summertime CTL colleagues, Yolanda Williams, shared with us today this List of Top 100 Tools for Learning from the UK Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies. It's a pretty good checklist of current instructional technologies. (Yolanda's note, though, pointed up an item in the Chronicle that took issue with the relative absence of library databases.)

In checking out the list, a couple things jumped out for me:

1. Our own (Lake Superior College's) Barry Dahl is one of the contributors to the Top 10/Top 100 list.
2. There's only one course management system on the list, and that's the open source Moodle. When I attended the TAOSE group's discussion on open-source IMS a couple weeks ago, a majority of the colleges and universities represented (outside of our system) were either adopting or experimenting with Moodle. Take a look at it; it's grown into a really flexible IMS.

As an adherent of social- or sociocognitive learning theory and fan of non-commercial, user-modifiable open source software, I'm fascinated by moodle, which was developed to serve both ends. It was initially developed by Martin Dougiamas, who articulates on the Moodle home page his own and Moodle's (imagine!) pedagogical philosophy.

The Minority Experience

This month's issue of About Campus explores a number of issues related to students' racial, social class, and cultural diversity.

It closes with an article by Craig Bennett of the University of Cincinnati. He teaches a course called "Strength Through Cultural Diversity," in which he gives students the assignment to "actively participate in a cultural event in which they can experience minority status." While the assignment requires involvement in just a single event, Bennett recounts the anxiety, panic, and resistance of his students. They are mostly white, and have grown up in white neighborhoods and schools.

They are often creative about finding new experiences: attending a gay nightclub, using a wheelchair at a shopping mall, or attending unfamiliar religious rituals. "However," says Bennett, "the experience that typically generates the most awareness and challenge is white students attending an African American church."

Besides resulting in good discussion and new awareness, the experiences end up with students reporting new more welcoming behavior, improved understandings--and giving highly positive end-of-course evaluations.

So now the question is: in what courses and disciplines--beyond the "diversity course" might this be a useful assignment? And, like Bennett, I'll ask you the starter question: "Who can share an experience in which you were the only person representing your race in a room?"

CTL Tutorials--please comment

We welcome comments about your experience at the CTL TUTORIALS:

• Grading: Making it Fair, Time Efficient, and Conducive to Learning
  
• An e-Handbook for New Faculty
  
• Getting Started Online
  
• Instructional Design for eLearning
  
• Active Learning in an Online Environment
  
• Active Learning in Diverse Classrooms
  
• Learning to Write in All Fields
  
• Civility in the Classroom: Classroom Management Strategies
  
• Effective ESL Peer/Student Tutoring
  
• Are you a Reflective Practitioner?
  
• Program Advisory Committee Handbook
  
• "I Hear You, Do You Hear Me?" Teaching in Racially Diverse Classrooms
  
• My Story, Your Story: Building Respect for Diversity in the Classroom
  
• It's Not What You Tell Them That Counts: Getting Started With Active Teaching
  
• Designing Plagiarism-Proof Assignments: Deterring Scholarly Dishonesty

CTL Tutorials--please comment

We welcome comments about your experience at the CTL TUTORIALS:

• Grading: Making it Fair, Time Efficient, and Conducive to Learning
  
• An e-Handbook for New Faculty
  
• Getting Started Online
  
• Instructional Design for eLearning
  
• Active Learning in an Online Environment
  
• Active Learning in Diverse Classrooms
  
• Learning to Write in All Fields
  
• Civility in the Classroom: Classroom Management Strategies
  
• Effective ESL Peer/Student Tutoring
  
• Are you a Reflective Practitioner?
  
• Program Advisory Committee Handbook
  
• "I Hear You, Do You Hear Me?" Teaching in Racially Diverse Classrooms
  
• My Story, Your Story: Building Respect for Diversity in the Classroom
  
• It's Not What You Tell Them That Counts: Getting Started With Active Teaching
  
• Designing Plagiarism-Proof Assignments: Deterring Scholarly Dishonesty