Three local colleges in the Lehigh Valley collaborate on a service-learning project called Brain Awareness Day to enhance neuroscience literacy among the public regarding the functions of the brain and benefits of brain research.
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For those of you unfamiliar with clicker personal response systems, a clicker is a handheld remote that students use to enter their responses to multiple choice questions. The question is displayed on the classroom overhead screen, usually within a Power Point presentation, and a receiver connected to a computer at the front of the room collects all responses, grades and stores each response, and (when requested) highlights the correct answer and displays a bar graph showing how many students chose each option. Here the author shares his personal experience using clickers during large introductory biology courses.
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This paper presents results from a July 2005 workshop and course aimed at developing an interdisciplinary course on modeling aquatic ecosystems that will provide the next generation of practitioners with critical skills for which formal training is presently lacking.
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For many years, the remarkable artists and graphic designers at NSTA have given JCST intriguing and delightful covers. However, focus groups and conversations revealed that our attractive covers were triggering, for some people, an image that wasn’t consistent with the content of JCST. Our hope is that the new cover will evoke an image of traditional academic publication in the mind of readers, potential authors, and (of course) those who can only give us a glance.
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Students in a general biology class used a learning contract where they selected chapter-relevant activities they could complete through several formats: oral, written, or artistic. The majority of students felt they learned a lot with this method, the process was motivating, and that it should be used in future semesters.
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This set of botany demonstrations is a continuation of the inquiry-based lecture activities that provide realistic connections to the history and nature of science and employ technology in data collection (see the September/October issue of JCST for Part I). The demonstrations also provide examples of inquiry-based teaching practices in the life sciences.
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This article provides some tips for success in facilitating teamwork. Working collaboratively is common in science and the functioning of teams has a large impact on both the implementation of a research project and student satisfaction with the experience. The strategies are divided into what can be done to minimize problems from the start and how to address the problems that do arise.
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This educational project involves prospective science teachers in implementing a natural science course for nonscience majors. The model creates a space for nonscience majors to experience learner-centered teaching practices while giving prospective teachers an opportunity to apply their science and science education course knowledge and learning.
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Science education research has produced empirical data supporting good teaching techniques. An awareness of this body of knowledge can be helpful in deciding what to do with your 50 minutes to increase the effectiveness of your lecture. Some simple but effective research-based lecture strategies are reviewed.
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This study found no evidence that seat location affects student achievement even in very large classes where students sitting in the back are a considerable distance from the instructor. Rather, the differences in performance observed were consistent with the idea that highly motivated students are more likely to sit in the front, resulting in an uneven distribution of scores.
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This article describes an approach to minimizing the “fear factor” in a chemistry course for the nonscience major, and also addresses relevant applications to other science courses, including biology, geology, and physics. The approach emphasizes forensic science and affords students the opportunity to hone their analytical skills in an inquiry-based format, within the context of the whodunit nature of criminal cases.
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In his article, Dale had constructed a tiered triangle to rank students’ ability to recall information that had been taught six weeks earlier (Dale 1969). Dale had found that only 5% of the knowledge gained through lecture was remembered by students several weeks after it was heard. Dale’s original tool for ranking student learning has evolved into a three-dimensional, sequentially-tiered triangle known as the cone of learning. The author put the cone of learning findings to the test with his nonscience majors using a simple, five-piece puzzle that, when correctly completed, would form a square. All of the instructional methods were tiers on the cone of learning and all had been documented in the science education literature read earlier. The outcome of the activity followed the one done by Dale several decades before. In both situations, the more active students were involved in the lesson, the more successful they were in learning the information.
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