Offering expertise in the teaching of writing (Kim Jaxon) and the teaching of science (Leslie Atkins Elliott and Irene Salter), this book will help instructors create classrooms in which students use writing to learn and think scientifically. The authors provide concrete approaches for engaging students in practices that mirror the work that…

We present an innovative course-based undergraduate research experience curriculum focused on the characterization of single point mutations in p53, a tumor suppressor gene that is mutated in more than 50% of human cancers. This course is required of all introductory biology students, so all biology majors engage in a research project as part of…

Today's undergraduates are highly engaged in a variety of social media outlets. Given their comfort with technology, we wondered if we could use this phenomenon to teach science-related material. We asked students to use freeware to make a short video with text, images, and music as a way to explain scientific concepts that are traditionally…

Although the use of portfolios to assess student performance in K-12 science classrooms and to monitor the training of preservice science teachers is increasingly common, their implementation in undergraduate science courses is still limited. The work presented here represents one in-depth example of the integration of portfolio assessment into…

This dissertation describes the teaching methods and educational philosophies of natural philosophy instructors at several of the colleges in colonial and early national North America. It finds two distinct approaches: the demonstrative, in which the instructor centers the course on visually engaging lecture-demonstrations, and the catechetical,…

The Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside has developed and implemented an innovative, multidisciplinary undergraduate curriculum in Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics (MBB). The objective of the MBB program is to give students a hands-on facility with molecular biology theories and laboratory techniques, an…

The biochemistry laboratory-based course of an undergraduate college is discussed. The course description and sequence of topics related to the subject of enzymes are given. Emphasis in the course is on students working from their classroom data. (SA)

Offers an author's understanding of investigative research and shows how it can be accomplished in a one-semester, nonmajors, first-year biology course. (ZWH)

Argues that, to make nonscientist students scientifically literate, they need to know the process by which science works, the so-called scientific method. (PR)

Questions as tentative and not universally acceptable some of the assumptions put forth by Romer, namely, that a scientific theory: is a deductive exercise; must accord with the facts; ought to be inflexible; is an explanation. (GH)

Offers three reasons to teach science to nonscientists--curiosity, technological bewilderment, and technological necessity, and offers some ideas on how courses addressed to these ideas ought to be taught. (PR)

A programed, two-credit hour, experimental microbiology course for nonscience majors is described. (SA)

This is the outline of a course designed to explore the complex interrelationships between science, technology and society. Units include: an introduction to the nature of science; exploration of the scientific method and its limitations; impact of science on learning; development of a technological society; and selected topics of modern science.…

Discusses the trend toward more "earth-as-a-system" approaches in research and teaching about global science. Uses the "greenhouse effect" as a prototypical global change problem that requires interdisciplinary problem-solving approaches. (TW)

Students (n=45) in an introductory course in hydrology used a Vee map to guide their laboratory investigation. The Vee mapping technique was utilized by groups of students working together during the investigation and was graded with a scoring rubric developed by the instructor. At the end of the investigation, students completed a survey…