HR: 14:10h
AN: ED22E-03    [PDF]
TI: Probing the Effectiveness of the Conventional Introductory Science Lecture
AU: Slater, T F
EM: tslater@as.arizona.edu
AF: University of Arizona, UA Department of Astronomy, 933 N Cherry Ave, Tucson, AZ 85721 United States
AU: * Prather, E E
EM: eprather@as.arizona.edu
AF: University of Arizona, UA Department of Astronomy, 933 N Cherry Ave, Tucson, AZ 85721 United States
AB: For quite some time now, the repeated call for a more student-centered approach to teaching due to the ineffectiveness of lecture has been gaining prominence in the earth and space science teaching community. However, our extensive review of the literature suggests that this claim of ineffectiveness of lecture has not been validated in the context of the conventional introductory science course for non-science majors. At the beginning of a large-enrollment introductory astronomy survey course, we administered 68-multiple choice items as a pretest to 81 students. At the end of each lecture we administered the specific items related to that particular day's lecture a second time as a posttest. The average score on the 68 items administered as a pretest was 30 percent correct and the posttest average score was 52 percent correct. Although this does represent a statistically significant gain in scores, we judge this level of success to be insufficient for long term learning achievement. These results illustrate that instructor-centered strategies are largely ineffective at promoting meaningful conceptual gains on traditional earth and space topics presented to non-science majors. This work was supported by NSF CCLI \#9952232 and NSF Geosciences Education \#9907755.
UR: http://shiraz.as.arizona.edu
DE: 6605 Education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting