This paper presents a case where students can learn about aquatic communities. In this case, students speculate on what may have caused a major fish kill in an estuary in North Carolina. In the process, they explore how land runoff and excess nutrients affect aquatic communities. They also learn about the complex life cycle of the dinoflagellate…

A gender gap in academic science continues despite persistent efforts at multiple levels to attract and retain talented women. Thus, impediments to women pursuing careers in science, and particularly in academia, continue to exist. To learn more about how the barriers women in science face can be eased or circumvented, the authors examined how an…

As the evidence of the benefits of multidisciplinary education accumulates many schools and instructors are finding ways of hybridizing courses to include substantial components of what are otherwise distinct sciences. Often, such course development is done with an eye toward industry, which requires a workforce capable of synthesizing varied…

This article describes a course that integrates environmental science students into local community organizations. Despite initially high expectations, students who completed the course held negative opinions about their experience because of inadequate community partner preparation. Based on the course's successes and challenges, in this article,…

Science for Elementary Educators is a multidisciplinary, interactive learning course developed for the science instruction of childhood education majors. The course described here is a model for science education reform that requires relatively few resources, making it ideal for adoption at any institution. (Contains 4 figures.)

Nontraditional laboratories can provide primary pathways by which students comprehend and apply modern astronomy. To teach a nontraditional astronomy lab, we must give students opportunities to critically contemplate unsolved questions and evaluate current data sources. In doing so, students can develop their own conjectures that will lead to…

Peer Led Team Learning (PLTL) is an effective and interactive approach to teaching mathematics and science. This approach involves the course instructor and peer leaders working with teams of students in weekly workshops. In this article, the authors state that peer leaders play a key role in the success of the peer learning teaching method. They…

Many students fail to integrate biological knowledge into larger conceptual frameworks. Although textbooks and lectures in general biology courses emphasize major concepts, when students respond to questions, they often appear to be randomly grasping at disconnected sound bites of biological knowledge. The knowledge they have accumulated does not…

This article presents a case study where students examine an advertisement claiming that listening to classical music in an advertised CD set will enhance their cognitive skills and creativity. Students evaluate the claims and evidence cited to support them and then determine how they might independently verify the claims. The author states that…

Based on recent reports in the science education literature, curricular modifications were made to one section of a freshman-level general chemistry course. Assessment results indicate that these modifications resulted in a more student-centered learning environment and increased student learning and satisfaction as compared to results from…

Zoo projects that encourage reflective learning and are legitimate undertakings for untrained undergraduates are hard to develop. In this article, the author, as a professor in anthropology, discusses and teaches primate studies. His pedagogical goal in teaching primate studies is to enhance the process of learning, and to consider that students…

We integrated four technology tools into a course to showcase their pedagogical usefulness. These were Course Compass, a web-based, course-management system; Moveable Type WebLog, an Open Source blog; recorded verbal critique, an evaluation of student projects recorded verbally and then web archived; and Calibrated Peer Review, a web-based,…

There has been renewed discussion of the scientific method, with many voices arguing that it presents a very limited or even wholly incorrect image of the way science is really done. At the same time, the idea of a scientific method is pervasive. This article identifies the scientific method as a simple model for the process of scientific inquiry.…

The inability to write scientific papers effectively remains a problem for many college students. To identify pedagogical constructs that help undergraduates write well in scientific formats, we evaluated the effect of the number and type of college composition courses previously taken, science writing experience, and tutorial services. In our…

Powerful Ideas in Physical Science (PIPS) is a preservice curriculum that provides modules for physical science courses designed for elementary education majors. Because the courses are built on the learning cycle approach, students develop concepts from activities and then apply this conceptual knowledge. A summative evaluation done by Horizon…