Deliberative democracy, a consensus model of decision making, has been used in real-life policy making involving controversial, science-related issues to increase citizen participation and engagement. Here, we describe a pedagogical approach based on this model implemented in a large, lecture-based, nonmajors introductory biology course at an…

We have undertaken an integrated and collaborative approach to developing foundational skills of students in a first year, Introductory Biology course. The course is a large lecture and laboratory course with enrollments ranging from 800-1000 per year. Teaching and Learning experts were brought into the course as weekly "Foundation Skills for…

In a recent study we showed that physics students' problem-solving performance can depend strongly on problem representation, and that giving students a choice of problem representation can have a significant impact on their performance [ P. B. Kohl and N. D. Finklestein, Phys. Rev. ST. Phys. Educ. Res. 1, 010104 (2005) ] In this paper, we…