The educational goal of civic science is to ensure that students understand the often controversial societal, political, and ethical issues grounded in science in ways that will help them make well-informed personal and civic choices (Garlick & Levine, 2016). Civic science creates opportunities to engage in controversial and complex public issues at the intersection of science and civic life such as the Planned Parenthood debate, the Flint Michigan water crisis, and the opioid crisis. This is a particularly compelling time to create more inclusive public discourse and civic engagement to increase understanding of the relevance of scientific research in ways that can bridge different perspectives on complex, science-based issues (Liu, 2009). As denial of widely accepted scientific evidence grows (Achenbach, 2015) and public misconceptions are fueled, science research faces opposition that undermines its public value (Leif, 2017). The consequences of these challenges that are widening the gap in public understanding of the relevance of science to our everyday lives is increasingly important. The college classroom is an important place for connecting science-based concepts and processes with civic, sociocultural, or economic perspectives (e.g., Marks & Eilks, 2009; SENCER, 2017). Particularly in the first year of college, the classroom is a logical place to cultivate an understanding of science practice and knowledge as accessible and relevant to students’ civic lives through civic science.

Tufts University is a private, competitive, predominantly white institution in the Boston area, enrolling about 11,000 students, about half of whom are undergraduates. Offered each spring since 2011, the 25-student first-year seminar, Science and the Human Experience, provides students from various disciplinary backgrounds opportunities to explore the personal, interpersonal, and societal impacts of contemporary and divisive science issues. The interdisciplinary nature of the course was intentional to highlight alternative ways of thinking and framing issues (Klein, 2006). The seminar is a nonrequired course that qualifies for natural science distribution credit, thus providing additional incentive for students from the humanities and social sciences to participate in the course. The course focuses on contemporary and often controversial science topics, and students can suggest topics to cover that arise from current events and are not originally part of the syllabus. The course’s team of faculty are from the university’s health profession schools and departments, social sciences, and humanities, and faculty from outside the university are invited to speak on topics ranging from the opioid crisis to the role of the media in science.

The seminar was designed with a civic science lens to teach foundational scientific literacy (Roberts, 2007) as a basis for interpreting the impact of science on students’ civic lives and values. The course has the dual aim of developing students’ ability, whether they become scientists or not, to critically evaluate policy and consume science media as informed, active, and engaged citizens. Students from various disciplinary backgrounds build science knowledge, engage peers in a values-based discussion of science issues, and explore the idea of science issues as relevant, personal, and accessible. Course design is also guided by principles of socioscientific issues pedagogy, which focuses on developing character through moral sensitivity, empathy and reflective judgment, and constructing alternative perceptions in science (Zeidler, Applebaum, & Sadler, 2011). As discussed later in this paper, many students left the course with changed views about science, an enhanced ability to participate in scientific discussions, and a better understanding of the relationship between science and civic life.

The course, Science and the Human Experience, is meant to teach principles of civic science and was designed around four facets of learning (Table 1). These facets lay groundwork for students to fully explore, through dialogue and writing, connections between science, personal values, and civic life. In the first facet, students developed foundational science literacy and a level of comfort discussing scientific topics. Science content areas were selected only if the teaching team believed them to have complexity, potential personal relevance, broad impacts, and clear interpersonal dimensions. In the second facet, students reflected on the personal relevance and impact of science topics on their lives. The third facet required connecting the societal relevance of a given science issue and its broader economic, moral, religious, biopolitical, civic, legal, or social impacts. The fourth facet, necessary for deep thinking, was understanding the foundations of varied and deeply held perspectives on science issues.

Three specific challenges/goals of the course were for students to (1) develop sufficient scientific literacy in short periods of time, (2) develop the necessary dialogic skills to openly explore alternative perspectives and effectively communicate their own perspectives, and (3) demonstrate development along the four facets outlined in Table 1 in a culminating assignment. Table 2 outlines how we addressed each of these challenges/goals and how they were assessed.

Science topics were selected based on specific criteria. The teaching team chose evidence-based science issues linked to a high degree of uncertainty to help students think critically about the “gray areas” that exist. For example, this included questions related to when life begins, how to define personhood and the value of the human embryo, the role of the state in end-of-life questions, and the uncertainty of harms that may be linked to epigenetic changes. Topics were also selected based on their potential relevance to students’ life experiences, and whether issues were likely to inform new personal and interpersonal perspectives when studied.

A brief overview of scientific principles was sufficient to give students a foundational literacy in contemporary science issues. Each topic was introduced with a concise background lecture on the terminology needed to develop sufficient “working literacy” for student enagement with the science content. These foundations in science literacy ensured that students of all disciplinary backgrounds had the tools to understand, analyze, and evaluate the social, moral, philosophical, political, and ethical issues that were embedded in this scientific information. Students were asked to take quizzes about the scientific topics discussed, and these were worth 15% of their final grade. As the intent was for students to learn the foundational, working scientific concepts in several science topics (e.g., stem cells, gene editing, ancestry testing, embryo cloning, epigenetics), course faculty viewed these as “proficiency quizzes.” Students were required to score at least seven out of ten points on the quizzes, and students who scored below seven were required to review this content and retake the quiz.

Students were coached to create guidelines for inclusive participation in classroom conversations. The guidelines helped students understand how to participate in discourse that avoided dogmatic approaches or staking claims to particular viewpoints, a process that we called “inclusive participation.” We created a grading rubric for inclusive student participation in both classroom and online discussions, emphasizing the importance for all voices to be heard, and shared commitments to listening and considering multiple perspectives. As many science issues discussed were linked to polarizing public debate, the use of these guidelines in their conversations encouraged students to value alternative points of view that at first seemed distant from their own, and to seriously consider their worth and the broader implications in the world.

At the mid-point of the course, students met individually with the instructor for a conversation through which they could assess how effectively their class participation, both online and in class, had contributed to the spirit of an inclusive conversation. Students assessed their participation by rating themselves on a scale of 1 to 5 on the the items listed in Table 3, where 5 is strongest and 1 is weakest. Effective engagement in dialogue consisted of 10% of the student’s grade, emphasizing this approach as an essential learning outcome of the course.

In addition to surveys, three focus groups were held: one with students who were finishing the course at the time of the focus group (six students), and two with course alumni who were still students at the university (four students in each group). The instructor (Garlick) was not present at the focus groups, which were facilitated by an education researcher (Bergom). The instructor and facilitator worked together to develop guiding questions for the focus groups. The discussions centered around aspects of the course that most affected students’ learning, how the course changed students’ thinking about science, how the course changed students’ views of the relationship between science and society, and what students learned that they plan to apply going forward. Student reflections in the focus groups are summarized below.

The course was designed to teach science literacy, which includes feeling comfortable reading and understanding popular scientific publications and engaging in well-informed conversation about specific topics in science. One student explained, “We can…engage with the [science-related] conversation, take it upon ourselves to read more and educate ourselves more, now that we know the foundation.” Another student reported feeling a sense that barriers to engaging with science were reduced, commenting, “I think it was reaffirming for me to be in a space that was like, ‘Yes, you can do science and you don’t need to be a scientist.’”

Guest lecturers with science expertise from experts in industry and academia taught basic scientific concepts such as epigenetics, genetics, and stem cell biology. They presented points of view that expanded or challenged students’ thinking, either about a scientific topic or about how we can use classroom dialogues to speak across difference on divisive science issues. A student commented that the guest lecturers “always expanded my understanding of science in some way while also testing what I believed.” Another said that the different viewpoints of guest lecturers “showed us that a dialogue isn’t one side just yelling and the other side just yelling theirs.” In this respect, two main course components converged—overview of scientific principles and inclusive dialogue and conversation—to create a cohesive learning experience for students.

Many students reported that the course helped them to see connections between science and social and economic issues that they had not seen before. Understanding these connections was eye-opening for science majors and nonmajors alike. Most students in the course identified as having strongest interests in the humanities or social sciences, and were eager to fuse these interests with a deeper appreciation of issues based in the natural and life sciences. A first-year student majoring in sociology explained: After this class… I see how sociology and science have all these intersections…Now as a sociologist, I am capable of bringing science into the way I think about social change and it has really profoundly changed how I conduct activism and it’s changed how I view interdisciplinary studies.

Students with little background in the natural and life sciences reported that they were motivated to acquire science literacy and quickly became conversant in the scientific topics discussed. They gained confidence in their abilities to understand and process scientific information that applied to contemporary issues they cared deeply about.

At the same time, students with a natural and life sciences orientation said they deepened their connection to these disciplines as they developed new perspectives on science issues by grappling with personal and moral dimensions of the issue. A student majoring in biology with plans to practice medicine commented: The big thing for me was seeing that connection between science and the world around in more than just a physical or chemical way. Seeing the connections in a very social way. For example, I remember talking about health and healthcare and access and I thought, “Oh I’m going to be a doctor and I’ll treat people, and it’s simple.” And it was a super naïve view because it is not simple at all, and people’s access to health care and so many things impact the kind of doctors they can see and the kind of treatment they can get.

Science-oriented students found value in developing science communication skills needed to explain complex, scientific jargon to their fellow students who were less conversant on science topics.

Intentional, sustained discussion was frequently mentioned by students as a key aspect of the course that influenced their learning. Discussions provided opportunities for students to talk about their own—and hear about others’—experiences, beliefs, and “truths” on complex, uncertain, or divisive science issues, as some students said. In these conversations, students felt that they did not have to be experts on a topic to have on opinion or to engage in conversation about the topic.

In the discussions, students were challenged to reflect on and articulate their own opinions and beliefs, but they also were challenged to consider other opinions related to controversial science-related topics—such as stem-cell research, the value of the human embryo, or epigenetics—that may differ from their own. Several students reported that the discussions deepened their ability to be empathic listeners.

Another student expanded on the idea of empathy as an outcome of the class discussions, saying, “I think this class teaches empathy more than anything else. The ability to connect with a human on a very basic level, that we all have these pasts, these histories, that inform how we view the world.” A student in one of the focus groups reflected that this ability to listen to opposing viewpoints is especially important in the current sociopolitical climate in the United States. The student commented: Frankly I think that is something that has been lost a little bit on college campuses these days is the ability to have dissenting opinions and the ability to listen to someone who has viewpoints you disagree with. And be able to calmly disagree and not disagree with them as a person. I think those are all skills that this class has reinforced.

It is important to note that the level of ideological diversity of students in the class or on the campus may affect the perspectives that they hear from one another and, thus, the learning experience. An ideologically diverse group of students means that students are more likely to face dissent on their core political values, while an ideologically uniform group could mean that students are not forced to question their underlying beliefs because students agree on them. On some topics in this course, such as when life begins, students were squarely on opposing sides of the issue in discussions. Other times, though, they tended to be in agreement, such as on the topic of social determinants of health (e.g., systematic injustice based on race and class versus genetics and life choices).

Related to ideological diversity, campus climate for sharing political beliefs may affect how open students feel they can be in these class discussions. In one informal survey of Tufts students, most respondents identifying as conservative indicated that they rarely or never feel that the campus climate allows students to openly share their political beliefs, while only a small minority of students identifying as liberal felt this way (Joung & Foster, 2016). It may be the case that the Tufts campus is a particularly homogenous one in terms of political ideology, and on other campuses disagreement in course discussions could more deeply challenge students’ underlying assumptions or worldviews.

During the course, the instructor strove to create an inclusive classroom environment in which all students were comfortable participating. Students reported feeling that the sense of community in the class was important for creating supportive, inclusive spaces where students were comfortable sharing viewpoints and engaging with others who disagreed with them. One student commented, “We all cared about each other and wanted to foster a dialogue and wanted to really be invested in what each other was saying and invested in each other’s projects.” The inclusive environment contributed to the success of the dialogues.