Archive for category: Newsworthy

– CBE Life Sciences

Climate change is impacting the Pacific Islands first and most drastically, yet few native islanders are trained to recognize, analyze, or mitigate the impacts in these islands. To understand the reasons why low numbers of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders enter colleges, enroll in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, or undertake life sciences/STEM careers, 25 representatives from colleges and schools in seven U.S.-affiliated states and countries across the Pacific participated in a 2-day workshop.

– CBE Life Sciences

Despite its value in higher education, academic rigor is a challenging construct to define for instructor and students alike. How do students perceive academic rigor in their biology course work? Using qualitative surveys, students were asked to identify “easy” or “hard” courses and define which aspects of these learning experiences contributed to their perceptions of academic rigor.

– CBE Life Sciences

Group work is often a key component of student-centered pedagogies, but there is conflicting evidence about what types of groups provide the most benefit for undergraduate students. The authors investigated student learning outcomes and attitudes toward working in groups when students were assigned to groups using different methods in a large-enrollment, student-centered class, with particular interest in how students entering the class with different levels of competence in biology performed in homogeneous or heterogeneous groups, and what types of group compositions were formed using different methods of group formation. They found that low-competence students had higher learning outcomes when they were in heterogeneous groups, while mid- and high-competence students performed equally well in both group types. Students of all competence types had better attitudes toward group work in heterogeneous groups. The use of student demographic variables to preemptively form groups and allowing students to self-select their group mates both yielded heterogeneous competence groups. Students in the instructor-formed, demographic groups had higher learning outcomes compared with students allowed to self-select. Thus, heterogeneous groupings provided the most benefit for students in our nonmajors, large-enrollment class.

–AAPT

College instructors are often afraid to use active learning instructional strategies because they fear that students may complain and/or give them lower evaluations of teaching.

–Nature

Programmers from high school through to graduate school are aiming to keep more women and people from underrepresented groups in the physical sciences.