Building Bridges
Science Education at Bryn Mawr College
Tri-College Science Teaching Symposium
May 8, 2001
Bryn Mawr College
SCIENCE TEACHING IN THE TRI-COLLEGE COMMUNITY
- Science Teaching Symposium
- Science Pedegogy Discussion
- Tri-College Science class web pages
Small Group Discussion
Helping Students Become Active Learners
Facilitated by Liz Vallen, Department of Biology, Swarthmore College
Our discussion mainly focused on techniques that have helped students become independent, active learners. This seemed to boil down to having student ownership of courses- lectures and collaborative exercises interspersed
- incentive driven – can make quiz scores for individuals the average of the scores that the student worked with in the collaborative group
- start with collaborative exercises to get students
where we want them to be; faculty need to be able to:
- synthesize comments among different groups
- think fast
- be willing to be wrong
- be willing to take risks
- filter ideas and bring them back to students
- These are all things that we want students to do, so it is great to model this behavior for them
- problem sets
- outside of class time
- 2 a week: one in a group, one individually
- 2 a week: one in a group, one individually
- students present problems to the class by a group
- communicate HOW to do problems, present work,
teach others, pay attention to classmates
- communicate HOW to do problems, present work,
teach others, pay attention to classmates
- discussion of problems in class
- no answer keys for problem sets or exams:
- getting across the idea that there is sometimes no single answer, no right answer or no clear right answer
- outside of class time
- Grades and faculty behavior/spirit
- stay away from grades as motivators – inconsistent
with getting students to become self-educating
- make sure enough direct communication to students
interests to have them self-motivate
- start course somewhere where the students can
have opinions and ideas and access to the material.
- pay attention to the spirit and interests of the
class, reflect this back to class:
- listen, absorb, learn from students –
model the behavior you want the students to have
faculty as facilitators rather than lecturers or instructors
- listen, absorb, learn from students –
model the behavior you want the students to have
- stay away from grades as motivators – inconsistent
with getting students to become self-educating
- Future prospects
- in 10 years, students may not be willing to sit
and listen for an hour!
- faculty will need to lead discussions, make adjustments
in real time
- web resources and development more important: by faculty and by students
- in 10 years, students may not be willing to sit
and listen for an hour!