To Raise Science Scores, Colleges Look Beyond the Lecture.

[elleng]

Hundreds of students fill the seats, but the lecture hall stays quiet enough for everyone to hear each cough and crumpling piece of paper. The instructor speaks from a podium for nearly the entire 80 minutes. Most students take notes. Some scan the Internet. A few doze.

In a nearby hall, an instructor, Catherine Uvarov, peppers students with questions and presses them to explain and expand on their answers. Every few minutes, she has them solve problems in small groups. Running up and down the aisles, she sticks a microphone in front of a startled face, looking for an answer. Students dare not nod off or show up without doing the reading.

Both are introductory chemistry classes at the University of California campus here in Davis, but they present a sharp contrast — the traditional and orderly but dull versus the experimental and engaging but noisy. Breaking from practices that many educators say have proved ineffectual, Dr. Uvarov’s class is part of an effort at a small but growing number of colleges to transform the way science is taught.

“We have not done a good job of teaching the intro courses or gateway courses in science and math,” said Hunter R. Rawlings III, president of the Association of American Universities and a former president of Cornell University and the University of Iowa. “Teaching freshmen and sophome level classes has not had a high enough priority, and that has to change.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/us/college-science-classes-failure-rates-soar-go-back-to-drawing-board.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

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No shit, sherlock!

After studying Transportation and learning about metro stations around the world, 2nd grade students built their own Metro stations. They first had to generate their own list of features that are accessible and help people navigate their way through Metro stations, and then they built model stations to physically represent those features.

https://www.facebook.com/lowellschooldc/posts/990025704344964

Fostering future architects in winter break club making ginger bread houses! Looks yummy eh?

https://www.facebook.com/lowellschooldc/posts/993193350694866

[Jim__]

1. I don't think the goal should be to raise scores; but rather to raise understanding.

But, it sounds like Uvarov's approach will definitely accomplish that.

[elleng]

3. Of course,

and that's another example of the ways US 'education' has faltered over the years, words are important! At Lowell (examples I provided,) the goal is clearly UNDERSTANDING!

[Igel]

4. It's a mixed bag.

Yes, it raises understanding. But takes longer.

The average student understands a bit more a bit better, the bottom 25% understands a lot a bit better, but the top 25% understands less just as well as before.

It's one way of closing the "achievement gap": You pull up the bottom 25%, but at the same time the top 25% stagnates a bit.

American education has a problem: It can't figure out what its purpose is. Is it so equalize opportunity? Produce the best trained graduates possible? Ensure that the majority are fairly well trained, or that everybody who starts graduates minimally trained? Each goal has a downside: If the goal is equal opportunity, then the goal isn't education but social engineering and the content and methods reflect that. If you want the best trained grads possible, then you want weeding out. If you want the majority well-trained, then you'll trim the top and bottom. If you want everybody trained to at least the same level, you're likely to get few trained above the minimum because that's not a priority (and it's damned hard to make sure everybody learns, given differences in cognitive functioning, background, study skills, etc.)


The one good thing in this kind of approach that benefits nearly all students is breaking up the lecture--you lose a bit of continuity, but you let the brain recoup a bit to allow greater focus. That can be taken to extremes, and usually just avoiding 80 minute class periods and giving people a break half-way through a 50-minute lecture class is sufficient.


In any event, if you have your tests properly aligned with what's to be learned and the questions are normed and validated then raising understanding will result in higher test scores. (It's just that you can get those several ways, each of which reflects a different set of goals.)

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Different people learn better under different conditions.

The problem here is that some will learn better in the traditional setting, while others will do better in the experimental condition.

The trick is to match the condition to the student. That is known as an aptitude-by-treatment interaction.

Educators have been talking about matching methods to individual learning styles for years.