A writing-across-the-curriculum and ethics component is presented for a second-semester, physical chemistry course. The activity involves introducing ethical issues pertinent to scientists. Students are asked to read additional material, participate in discussions, and write essays and a paper on an ethical issue. The writing and discussion component provides another opportunity for students to read and think about broader ethical issues in the scientific community. Two items were found to make the writing element successful: (1) some type of student support for writing (workshop, writing center, etc.) and (2) a guest lecture from a philosophy faculty member to review ethical theories. In addition, a pre- and postforum questionnaire concerning ethical issues for scientists was given to students. Directional differences in agreement were found for such issues as limits on the pursuit of knowledge, development of weapons of mass destruction, and how well-rounded scientists should be.
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Science teaching and learning can be made both engaging and student-centered using pedagogical, computer-based learning tools. The authors have developed self-paced interactive problem-solving tutorials for introductory physics. These tutorials can provide guidance and support for a variety of problem-solving techniques, as well as opportunities for knowledge and skill acquisition. The goals and structure of the tutorials and summarize results of a study that compares performance of students who used the tutorials with those who learned similar content by other means are discussed.
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Does the process of gaining tenure and promotion make your stomach lurch? If your answer is “yes,” you are not alone. In this month’s column, the author recounts her personal experience related to this grueling procedure and discusses a highly informative study that uses empirical evidence to prove that “it’s not just you” who feels this way.
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In this inquiry-based activity, students catalog external and internal characteristics of four different classes of animals during dissection exercises. On the basis of their accumulated data, students compare and contrast the animals, devise a phylogenetic tree, and provide reasonable characteristics for extinct transitional organisms.
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In October of 2009, the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineer (CEOSE) held a symposium on Women of Color in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; NSF-OAI). The symposium featured data pertaining to Asian, African American, Hispanic, and Native American women and their participation in STEM. It is critical to become familiar with this data, because the numbers of underrepresented women in STEM are sparingly small. Ultimately, this has an impact on diversity and excellence in academia for faculty and students. These data are a call to action. If we value diversity and excellence at our institutions, we must consider how we recruit, advance, and retain underrepresented women (URM) faculty and also how we recruit, retain, and graduate the URM students who could one day join us in the faculty ranks.
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The authors have developed and implemented a novel general education science course that examines scientific knowledge, laboratory experimentation, and science-related public policy through the lens of feminist science studies. They argue that this approach to teaching general science education is useful for improving science literacy. Goals for science literacy for nonscience majors are discussed. They used pre- and postsurveys (Likert scale), exam scores, and classroom assessments to examine the impact of this course on students. A final analysis shows that students made significant gains in science content knowledge, increased their confidence in learning science (content and experimental work), and increased their understanding of feminist analysis of science and science-related public policy.
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Metabolism is a dynamic, simultaneous, and integrative science that cuts across nutrition, biochemistry, and physiology. Teaching this science can be a challenge. The use of a scenario-based, visually appealing, interactive, computer-animated CD may overcome the limitations of learning “one pathway at a time” and engage two- and four-year college students in a deep understanding of integrative metabolism.
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Last year, we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (1809–1882); it has been approximately 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species on the theory of evolution by natural selection. As the authors’ contribution to this celebration, she offers a few peripheral thoughts that speak of the value of interdisciplinary thinking, parallel revolutions, and the nature of science.
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This study examined the nature of college students’ interest or lack of interest in science and the factors to which they attributed their interest or lack of interest. Twenty-four college students were interviewed to gain an understanding of their ideas and experiences of science; their overall interest in science; their interest levels in four aspects of science: (1) learning science facts/concepts in school, (2) learning science facts/concepts outside of school, (3) figuring out scientific knowledge in school, and (4) figuring out scientific knowledge outside of school; and the factors to which they attributed their interest or lack of interest in science. The constant comparative method of qualitative analysis was used for data analysis. The findings revealed that most students had different levels of interest in the four aspects of science. Almost all students who identified themselves as uninterested in science were very interested in some areas of science in some contexts. Reasons to account for the different levels of interest in different aspects of science and implications for education are discussed.
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In this article, the authors report the results of a preliminary study of preservice teachers’ ability to transfer their knowledge between their chemistry and Earth science courses. They examined whether they could answer the transfer questions correctly, how they explained their answers, and what information from their coursework they used to answer the questions in order to garner a more complete understanding of how they used their previous learning experiences to address novel problems.
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The authors engaged nonscience majors enrolled in an integrated science course with a prototype activity designed to change their mindset from cookbook to inquiry science. This article describes the activity, the Warm Little Pond, which helped students develop essential understanding of basic statistics, significant figures, and the idea that scientific knowledge is a constructed model of reality.
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This is a series of short cases useful for a variety of courses, including physiological psychology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, and cognitive neuropsychology/neuroscience. Each of these cases depicts a breakdown in language that may be traced to damage in an area or areas that are related to language processing, and each is based on an actual case or cases reported in the literature. These cases were originally written for use in a problem-based learning format, but they may also be used as individual assignments.

Please note: These cases focus on disruptions of spoken communication and reading. Additional disruptions of writing may also occur with damage to the brain areas associated with language (particularly Broca’s area).
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A new challenge in science education at the university level is the implementation of effective field components within online courses. In nationwide online graduate geoscience courses composed of practicing teachers (N = 130), Google Earth laboratory exercises were incorporated to provide virtual field experiences. Student opinions of these activities were collected via an optional, electronic survey; most students (N = 99) participated. Although many students enjoyed the modern technology of Google Earth, some felt frustrated with the assignments’ format. Content analysis of student responses revealed three stable suggestions for successful online implementation of Google Earth: (1) The activities should be modeled via ideo lectures, (2) each activity should be supplemented with identified landform examples, (3) and the number of identifications per assignment should be optimized for learning. Students independently noted that investigation of “real-life pictures” of Earth, the use of online mapping technology in distance learning, and the application of Google Earth within their own classrooms were overwhelming benefits of virtual field experiences in online classrooms.
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