Achieving Large-Scale Instructional Change in STEM Education

Speaker: Dr. David K. Campbell, BU

When: April 28, 2010 (Wed), 04:00PM to 05:30PM (add to my calendar)
Location: SCI 352

The PROSTARS Innovations in STEM Education Professional Development Workshop Series (iUSE) presents Session 6: Achieving Large-Scale Instructional Change in STEM Education with Dr. David K. Campbell, Boston University Provost.

Light refreshments will be available.

DESCRIPTION:

How do we successfully implement innovation in STEM education on a large-scale? What strategies exist to encourage and sustain reform among all STEM faculty teaching gateway courses?

While Boston University Provost, Dr. David K. Campbell, was at the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), he undertook a major revitalization of their introductory physics curriculum. Physics education research provided new insights to radically improve the way physics was taught and the computer revolution provided new, exciting pedagogical tools. These new capabilities, coupled with the need to provide greater flexibility to students, and the capability of the World Wide Web to provide an interactive learning environment, stimulated them to revise their introductory courseware. The goal was to establish a paradigm for science education for the 21st century that develops higher-order thinking competencies, promotes collaborative learning, and improves communication skills.

Over the Fall 1996 – Spring 2000, both the calculus-based introductory physics sequence and the algebra-based sequence were completely restructured. These courses are taken by nearly 5000 undergraduate students each year at the UIUC. This fundamental curriculum revision has five overall objectives:

  • To “institutionalize” meaningful course content and effective pedagogical methods, so that good teaching is not dependent on a single inspired instructor but is integral to all sections of all classes.
  • To incorporate new physics instructional techniques, based on physics education research that emphasize conceptual understanding.
  • To utilize state-of-the-art instructional media, including multimedia lecture presentations, World Wide Web-based interactive course materials, and laboratory computer data acquisition and analysis.
  • To develop students’ teamwork skills and to promote students’ opportunities for collaborative learning.
  • To develop a model for basic science teaching that will be “portable” to other departments on our campus and to other physics departments at large research universities.