UC Davis on the vanguard of transforming undergraduate STEM teaching practices

Colleges Reinvent Classes to Keep More Students in Science, NY Times, 12/26/2014

This short article is a great overview of how active learning looks in a large introductory level undergraduate science class, why it's worth doing, and what the barriers are to making it happen. It profiles efforts to revamp the way introductory science courses are taught at UC Davis. Some highlights:

• A University of Colorado study did pre- and post-tests on thousands of Introductory Physics students over several years and found that students in "transformed" classes had improved their tests scores by about 50% more than students in traditional classes.
• Transformed classes share certain characteristics: creative uses of technologies, frequent group work in and out of class, use of class time to do problem-solving exercises while instructor move between groups, holding students accountable for readings by having them answer questions about the readings online prior to class, active solicitation of student feedback and responses during class - often through the use of smartphone apps or clickers.
• A UNC study demonstrated that overhauling an intro biology course had improved student performance overall, but had been particularly beneficial for black students and those whose parents had not attended college.
• Employers and government officials have been urging colleges and universities to produce more STEM graduates - especially women and blacks - but at four-year colleges, while 28% of students start out as STEM majors, only 16% graduate with STEM related degrees. The attrition rate is highest among women and blacks.
• Despite the strength of research findings, most college faculty continue to teach intro-level science and math classes in a traditional lecture format. Experts point to several factors for this: the low value placed on teaching at research universities, a reward structure geared towards research publications and grants, faculty members' lack of formal training in educational theory and teaching methods - and their unwillingness to accept help revising their approach to teaching, and faculty hesitation to take on the extra work required to revise a course and a fear of giving up control of what happens in the classroom.
• The UC Davis project takes advantage of resources available from the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon, as well as the work of Nobel Laureate Carl E. Weiman, Eric Mazur, and Doug Lamov.
• Because it can be difficult to tell (especially tenured) faculty that they need to overhaul how they teach, the UC Davis project began by providing intensive pedagogical training and support to  graduate student TAs. They also tested students' grasp of basic concepts before and after traditional introductory lecture courses and used the results to start to convince professors that their students were learning much less than they had thought.