Continued from A Scientific Approach to Science Education - Beliefs, Guided Thinking And Technology.

Last time I discussed reducing cognitive load in a new approach to scientific education:

Some ways to do so are obvious, such as slowing down. Others include having a clear, logical, explicit organization to the class (including making connections between different ideas presented and connections to things the students already know), using figures where appropriate rather than relying only on verbal descriptions and minimizing the use of technical jargon.

Addressing Beliefs

Continued from Part 2, A Scientific Approach to Science Education - Research On Learning

On average, students have more novicelike beliefs after they have completed an introductory physics course than they had when they started; this was found for nearly every introductory course measured. More recently, my group started looking at beliefs about chemistry. If anything, the effect of taking an introductory college chemistry course is even worse than for taking physics.

Continued from Part 1, Why Not Try A Scientific Approach To Science Education?

In a traditional science class, the teacher stands at the front of the class lecturing to a largely passive group of students. Those students then go off and do back-of-the-chapter homework problems from the textbook and take exams that are similar to those exercises.

The purpose of science education is no longer simply to train that tiny fraction of the population who will become the next generation of scientists. We need a more scientifically literate populace to address the global challenges that humanity now faces and that only science can explain and possibly mitigate, such as global warming, as well as to make wise decisions, informed by scientific understanding, about issues such as genetic modification.

Moreover, the modern economy is largely based on science and technology, and for that economy to thrive and for individuals within it to be successful, we need technically literate citizens with complex problem-solving skills.

In Optimizing The University - Why We Need a New Educational Model For A New Century I laid out some of the issues facing post-secondary science education and how changing student demographics and modern faculty responsibilities have exacerbated the challenges of adapting science education to fill the educational demands of modern society. I also discussed how the new knowledge gained from advanced assessment techniques have shown us the extent of the shortcomings.  

In Optimizing The University - Why We Need a New Educational Model for a New Century I discussed some of the issues facing post-secondary science education. In particular, that piece focused on how changing student demographics, modern faculty responsibilities and the new knowledge gained from advanced assessment techniques showed us that we need to fix fundamental aspects of science education if students are to receive the high quality education that is becoming increasingly important to individual and societal success.

Now I am going to discuss what this new optimized university - our university of 2020 - will look like. While academics might wish for an ideal university with unlimited resources and no real constraints, it is more useful to ask what is possible in the real world.

So I will discuss what we need for an attainable university that provides the best undergraduate education possible within certain basic constraints on resources and organizational structures - a truly “optimized” university. The constraints are based on the pragmatic assumptions that resources in support of higher education will not dramatically increase and most of the long standing structures such as disciplines and departments will be largely intact, as will the current broader faculty responsibilities.

There are currently great needs and great opportunities for improvement in post-secondary science education. As world education improves, we need to provide more students with complex understanding and problem solving skills in technical subjects to allow them to be responsible and successful citizens in modern society.

Emerging research indicates that our colleges and universities are not achieving this. However, there are great opportunities to improve this situation using advances in the understanding of how people learn science and advances in educational technology.