Philosophy:
Large classes typically consist of 3 lectures per week, one discussion section per week, a mid-term and final exam. Research has shown that students retain only about 10% of lecture material. You can easily verify this by asking your students to write a "minute paper" at the end of one of your lectures. In a minute paper, students are asked to write a) the major idea or concept expressed during the lecture and b) the concept they had the most trouble with during the lecture. You will be shocked at how little they have understood, no matter how crafted and organized your lecture.
It is vital that we learn how to reach non-science students. A populace that does not appreciate science and scientific thinking will be unlikely to recognize the views of scientists, the value of scientific research, or the importance of the global environmental issues that they will face in the future.
Rather than focussing on teaching students a certain quantity of content, we need to focus on teaching them:
- How to think like critically about science
- How to access and analyze scientific data
- How to express themselves through writing
- An awareness of how "viewpoint" can affect the application of science
- A basic knowledge of how the earth works
If we give up an emphasis on "content coverage", most of which students do not remember anyway, in favor of the above goals, students will become more scientifically literate while incidentally retaining the course content at a deeper level of understanding. It works!
To meet the above objectives, this course requires all students to write a technical paper for their mid-term grade. They also use the world-wide web to search for information on particular topics and present the information to the class (in their lab section). Critical thinking is emphasized. The course consists of:
- Weekly 2 hr section meeting with 2-4 unstructured "open access hours"
- Technical paper written for mid-term grade
- Weekly computer graded problem set due at start of lab section meeting
- Field trip to the beach (on-campus) to observe waves and their affect on the beach
- Field trip to the Marine Science Institute to view and handle nearshore marine life
- Information search and analysis exercises on world-wide web
Cooperative learning methods are used during the sections. These are quite effective and based on research (and our experience) indicating that the most effective way to learn material is to teach it.
Please let me know if you would like to apply this material to your own class.
Click here to mail me at: prothero@magic.ucsb.edu
Return to main Home Page