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October 25, 2012

Lectures Still Dominate Science and Math Teaching, Sometimes Hampering Student Success By Dan Berrett Lecturing remains the most common method for teaching undergraduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, known as the STEM disciplines. Although other forms of instruction have made inroads, the continuing reliance on this pedagogical tool may be stymieing efforts to increase the number of graduates in those programs. "We have a really good idea about what doesn't work: lecturing students without engaging them, having labs not linked with lectures," says James S. Fairweather, a professor of educational administration at Michigan State University and a co-principal investigator of an Association of American Universities project that seeks to improve STEM education. A recent faculty survey shows that more instructors in STEM fields than those in other disciplines rely on this method: 63 percent of STEM professors said they used "extensive lecturing" in all or most of their classes, according to the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. About 37 percent of faculty in other fields said they did so. The latest results of the survey were released on Wednesday. The survey, which is conducted every three years, was administered during the 2010-11 academic year to 23,824 full-time and 3,547 part-time faculty who teach undergraduates at four-year institutions. Increasing the number of graduates from STEM programs has been a national priority for years, and it has only grown in urgency. President Obama and other policy makers have recently touted it as an economic, civic, and national-security imperative. High Rate of Attrition

Students continue to wash out of those programs at a high rate, though. Less than 40 percent of those who enter college intending to be STEM majors complete a degree in one of those fields, according to a report issued this year by the President's Council of

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Advisors on Science and Technology. The traditional view among some faculty members has been that students leave those majors because they are poorly prepared or cannot handle the intellectual rigor. That view irritates Elaine Seymour, whose 1997 book, Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences, marked a watershed in understanding the dynamics that cause STEM majors to quit their disciplines. Ms. Seymour, director emerita of ethnography and evaluation research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and her co-author, Nancy M. Hewitt, surveyed seven institutions, conducting hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with 335 students, including those who had left STEM majors and those who had persisted. Ms. Seymour and a team of researchers will start revisiting the same institutions next year to update the original study. "Poor teaching," a term the researchers used to describe a litany of student complaints, emerged as the most common concern among both STEM graduates and those who had left those majors, according to the 1997 book. And STEM teaching in the 1990s, Ms. Seymour says in an interview, invariably took the form of lecturing. "This was all a critique of that method," she says. The researchers heard that professors often grew frustrated with students when they failed to learn from the faculty's explanation of the material, instead of giving the students opportunities to work with the subject matter themselves. Some professors, says Ms. Seymour, seemed especially concerned with covering as much of the curriculum as possible, which could make the instructional pace overwhelming. The UCLA data about the use of lectures are actually a hopeful sign, Ms. Seymour says. If 63 percent of STEM faculty are lecturing, it means that nearly 40 percent are not. "It's a good marker of change," she says. Developing Muscles

Faculty in the STEM disciplines stand out for other reasons, according to the UCLA survey. They grade on a curve at double the rate of their non-STEM colleagues. About 26 percent of STEM faculty report grading on a curve; 13 percent of non-STEM faculty do so. Curves tend to be used for two purposes, says Kevin Eagan, assistant director for research at UCLA's institute. The first is to

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raise grades, an approach that he says is most common at open-access and other nonselective institutions. At more-competitive ones, he says, the practice often serves to distribute grades along a bell-shaped pattern. A professor curving to conform to a bell shape will hand out only a limited number of A's and B's, which means that a student's grade may appear worse than what he or she actually earned, Mr. Eagan says. "In some ways, grading practices may discourage students from staying in the majors." Using a curve in grading is symptomatic of larger problems with STEM faculty's lack of familiarity with educationally effective practices, says Carl E. Wieman, a professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of British Columbia. A winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001, Mr. Wieman has dedicated the past several years to improving STEM education, visiting campuses in hopes of bringing wider acceptance to new teaching methods that have an empirical record of helping students learn. He stepped down in June as associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Using a curve separates students' performance from the grades they receive. It is part of a general pattern often seen in STEM courses, say several experts, in which rote tasks obscure the subject matter's underlying concepts, and tests and laboratory activities are disconnected from authentic scientific practice. Faculty members are very rarely trained in creating valid measures of learning, Mr. Wieman says, and they do not receive feedback on the quality of their examinations. "They're novices, and they stay novices," he says. Grading, he is persuaded, has become "this totally arbitrary thing." A growing body of research demonstrates that gaining expertise in any complex subject, like a STEM discipline, is much like developing muscles, he argued in an article in the fall issue of Issues in Science and Technology. Sitting passively in a lecture hall fails to develop those muscles. Faculty, Mr. Wieman says, must design practice tasks for students that are appropriate to their levels of understanding, but still sufficiently difficult to require intense intellectual effort. Work assigned in and out of class should connect patterns of expert thinking in the discipline to what the students already know, and it should motivate them. The tasks also need to be followed by timely

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feedback from professors. Lectures can be effective when used in those ways, Mr. Wieman says. But they should be kept short and focused, and faculty need to interact frequently with students, who must expend effort to engage with the material. Testing Sites

A few superstar performers can also bring material to life in lectures, says Hunter R. Rawlings III, president of the Association of American Universities, which represents 61 leading research universities. "Some lecturers are just fantastic at inspiring and simulating students," he says. "But let's be honest and admit that's not always the case." Many advocates for changing STEM education are heartened that the association, whose member institutions train a large share of research faculty in the STEM disciplines, is paying close attention to the topic. The association's five-year project started last year. As many as eight member universities will serve as test sites, within which two or three STEM departments will adopt approaches to developing syllabi and teaching courses that have a record of success. They will set learning goals and compare results with other departments and universities over two or three years. "We'll write articles and treat it the way it should be," Mr. Rawlings says, "namely, as a science research project." Requiring several departments in a university to participate is a critical part of the strategy, he says. It is more likely to shift the culture of the institution. "It means the chair and leadership have to get behind it and say, 'We have to change,'" he says. One challenge for those who seek to change STEM education is to make it more manageable, says Mr. Fairweather, the Michigan State researcher who is helping lead the AAU project. Research about learning is one thing. Knowing how to distill it into practices that faculty can use in the classroom is something else. Rewards and incentives, Mr. Fairweather says, also need to change. Mr. Wieman proposes deeper, more structural fixes. He suggests making federal grants for STEM research contingent on universities' reporting on their teaching practices and rate of student success. Such an expectation could prompt improvements in teaching

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practices, he says. A prospective student could compare elite universities, all of which may do pathbreaking research. "You might say, 'Gosh, although their research looks the same, they're profoundly different in how they educate students,'" he says. "That's what you're paying tuition for." Comments Powered by DISQUS

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keithwms 1 day ago Indeed, experiential earning is critically important in these fields. One of the most difficult obstacles that students face is making that critical link between tangible experience and abstract reasoning. Experience is a great teaching tool, and it also motivates students much more than sitting in a lecture room. Of course, we do need to be realistic about how much lecture time can be displaced, before negatively affecting theoretical learning. Many of our students simply aren't prepared to cram more theory into less time. Perhaps the blended / flipped approaches will enable us to convey the core material more efficiently and devote more time to the hands-on learning that our students need. I still see no substitute for high quality, eye-to-eye, personal instruction, however. Our students do need quite a lot of coaching along the way. My own experience in the research university setting is that creative teaching is terribly undervalued and sometimes even actively discouraged. It is a great irony. Our research universities have cool experiments going on quite near the lecture rooms... so you'd think this would mean that it's a more inspiring place for students to learn. But no: research universities hire faculty to do research, not to teach! I don't know how many times I've been told that if I really want to teach then I should go to a *teaching* school! :rolleyes: Clearly, too few students are getting those really inspiring, hands-on learning experiences, and we undervalue the teachers who can make that happen. edit: spaces, spelling, grammar

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ceasar 19 hours ago

Spot on.

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aloofbooks 1 day ago I have always been skeptical of the lecture method. While there are soem professors who are FANTASTIC lecturers, more often than not, lecturing has often been employed as a safe harbor for mediocre professors.

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triumphus 1 day ago Safe harbor from what?

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schultzjc 1 day ago Safe harbor from having to prepare and having to actually deal with students. Lecturing is the easiest teaching in the world.

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archman 19 hours ago Well... yes. You are correct. Lecturing at least ensures mediocrity. You can be reassured that it will not fail catastrophically as can happen in a flipped, discussion or project based classroom when the instructor and students are not fully prepared. I have witnessed a few of these... they are very, very ugly things to behold. In one instance I actually had an urge to simply throw some lecture notes at a professor and save her from the rowdy chaos of a hostile unprepared class.

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mbelvadi 1 day ago Count me in among those who entered college with both the skills to handle, and a love of, math and science, and was completely turned off it after just one year of extremely bad lecturers we're talking the classic "turns his back to the class and writes on the chalkboard for a straight hour" kind of bad. And it's hard for some people to hear it, but a big part of that is also faculty, mostly Chinese in my experience, whose accents are so thick that such lecturing becomes even less of a learning experience because no one can understand a word the prof is saying. And since the only thing he (always a "he") does is talking, then the students rapidly realize that there is no point to attending class at all, except to copy down (today's students might photograph) the chalkboard and you could just get that from a classmate.

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tmenzel 1 day ago welcome to the 21st century.

mbelvadi 22 hours ago Uhh, what I'm describing was 1986, not really that close to the 21st century.

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cwm4c 23 hours ago At our R1, We've seen a marked trend in STEM students who are leaving the discipline in the first 2 years, not because they cannot cut the courses or get the grades, but rather because they are bored and do not like this style of learning. We're talking students in the 3.5-4.0 range leaving in large numbers. This study is very useful and consonant with our observations and changed efforts, including flipped clasrroms and recast labs and old recitation sections.

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climate_change 1 day ago When I was a student (in a science field), the best professor I ever had basically "did everything wrong"--all lectures, disorganized materials, no textbook, no syllabus, the midquarter exam two days before the final, no graded materials ever turned back to students, etc. It was fantastic. It was fantastic because this person knew the material, was passionate, helped us understand difficult concepts, and cared, although not in the traditional ways we are evaluating faculty. Please don't forget the intangibles, in my opinion they are the only things that really count.

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fortysomethingprof 20 hours ago Yeah, when I was in college the first-timer with the South American accent turned out to be a fabulous teacher. Straight lectures, homeworks, and exams. The interesting thing was that his accent forced you to pay more attention and listen more carefully. Lectures can be poor or they can be great. Every student will not agree on which is which. But in STEM, I think what matters in STEM is what the GOOD students think, because they're the ones you want to keep in the program and they deserve to be challenged.

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11152886 15 hours ago Yup, I had a German professor for an introductory Asian art history course my first year in college. He translated Chinese poetry into English with a German accent when discussing visual material and its epoch. I know what you mean about paying attention. Even more astounding was that his exams were short essays, with no correct answer. I'd never had to write a short essay to defend my point of view in this manner. This really made me hit the library and do research about that which we were shown slides (Asian art) and being lectured. Not knowing what to expect after the final exam (a really tough exam with about 20 short essay questions of 4 to a page with lines to write on), I was stunned with I got my finals postcard (a tradition for a course at this university). My final average was 68 (normally considered a D), and then tiny writing remarking what an excellent job I'd done, and the final grade of A. I truly learned to think and apply what I'd learned and discovered in that course. It was one of the most interesting classes I took while in college.

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tmenzel 1 day ago I am not advocating for a "bad lecturer" as described in other posts, but I think the rush towards inquiry based methods is missing some things. While it may be desirable to retain more students in the STEM areas, does this do us any good if they are learning less? There is typically an acknowledgement with inquiry based methods that less material can be covered, that is considered a fair trade off by its advocates, but can science students really function upon graduation with less information? "Some professors, says Ms. Seymour, seemed especially concerned with covering as much of the curriculum as possible, which could make the instructional pace overwhelming." As humans in general learn more, should our students be learning less? Is it possible that the lack of retention in science and math is due to a decrease in lectures in other areas, making the math and science seem more difficult? Throughout K-12, and in all areas besides STEM once in college, students are breaking out into groups to learn at their own pace. Is it surprising that after years of being instructed this way, the rigor required to learn calculus or the human body is no longer accessible. Sitting down and taking notes, bringing your notes home and referring back to them while reading the text book, is a skill that today's students are missing. Maybe those muscles need to be developed as well...

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schultzjc 1 day ago Stop and think: is the amount of "material" covered your best definition of successful education? Has the amount of "material" in the sciences stayed the same? Both answers should be "no". Scientific information ("material" or "content") continues to accumulate exponentially, but class length, semester length, and brain size have all remained the same. It is simply impossible to gauge successful education as the amount of material transferred. And study after study show that lecturing is the LEAST effective way to transfer information and is totally ineffective at developing thought processes. Comments like tmenzel's evoke and image of teachers with shovels, not educators.

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rrowlett 1 day ago In introductory courses in chemistry, physics, math, and to a large extent biology, the quantity of information necessary to learn has not significantly changed in the last 3 decades. The core concepts are still the same. The information explosion impacts advanced courses to a much higher degree, but in this case one simply prioritizes which information to package into the available time. In a well-designed curriculum, topics are chosen in various classes to scaffold concepts that allow students to progress to more advanced work.

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tmenzel 22 hours ago We have to do some shoveling, or spooning as the case may be. Life is hard and a biologist needs to know a lot of things. I also think that engagement, interaction, discovery are important, but the willingness to listen and to read, and the ability to comprehend are also important. I don't agree with gregor2 below that this should be about eliminating the weak. I just think that being able to follow a lecture and read a textbook is an important skill, and it is one that is disappearing.

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victorl 22 hours ago I question your contention (widely referenced--rarely quantified) that scientific information "continues to accumulate exponentially." Surely, like other fields of intellectual endeavor, science progresses on its way. But at the basic and introductory levels typically studied by the widest number of college students, this content has not grown at such a fantastic pace, or more so than the vibrant and innovative ways scholars have advanced other disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. And intellectual advancement is not quite the same as the proliferation of web pages, as many suggest. What I believe has grown, and has been reinforced by the educational profession, is a great unwillingness to convince students that some material needs to be memorized before one can explore a topic in a more nuanced, eclectic, and experiential way. At its basic levels, science doesn't just "depend," on how you feel, what your opinion is, or whose particular set of beliefs (outside the scientific scholarship you are studying) you care to uphold. In the sciences, there are equal signs, and wrong answers. Quite honestly, I want the engineers who design and build the airplanes that carry me 1000's of miles at 35,000 feet, to have a *very* solid, comprehensive, and deeply internalized understanding of the principles of their discipline. The structural integrity of our buildings, bridges, etc., doesn't just "depend" on how you feel about equations and physical properties. It matters in quite real, fundamental, and profound ways. It's a different type of learning that is not suited to all students. That does not make the topics, or their method of instruction, more rigorous, or more inferior, than others. Just as some of us do not grasp social theory, philosophical reasoning, or literary analysis, there will

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be students who find they do not have the aptitude for science. How wonderful that our colleges and universities offer such an array of subject areas which can be explored, studied, and perhaps advanced, by student learners.

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schultzjc 13 hours ago These comments really sound like the typical professor's defense "they really only need to know (and I only really need to teach) the same ol' fundamentals." Well, that's the best argument against a) teaching the same ol' way, and b) a separate professional teacher's track. I'm glad ai didn't study at the above institutions.

12073063 21 hours ago I think you are confusing the amount of content being "taught" with that actually being "learned." As the article indicates, these more active types of teaching result in much more learning and in students being able to retain the material .....BTW - teaching without learning is just talking....let's try to increase the amount of teaching/learning and decrease the amount of talking.

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Socratease2 18 hours ago What evidence exists that employing more experiential learning methods will create students who learn less? Seems like a rhetorical question. anyway, with current technologies, there are many other ways to deliver the lecture end of learning and allow more student-teacher contact in actual classroom setting. And what decrease in other lectures are you refering to? Are you saying in the social sciences and humanties, professors are lecturing less? Based on what? How does "amount of lecture" affect whether a class seems relatively more or less difficult compared to one with a different amount of class lecture? Seems the content of the class is what creates difficulty or not. And outside STEM classes, undegrads are breaking out into small groups and learning at their own pace??? Exactly what school are you at, sounds like a Montesourri pre-school.

gregor2 1 day ago Forgotten in this article and so far in this discussion is the sad but true facts: 1. STEM is hard and not all students are cut out for STEM. 2. The lecture format is the best format for delivery of bulk content. No other pedagogy can match the amount of material that can be covered in a standard lecture. 3. Using "extensive lecture" requires that students take OWNERSHIP in their education and spend significant time ON THEIR OWN outside of class, which apparently many students are reticent to do. So, if you are a student who requires someone to spoon feed you, then by all means find professors that primarily use alternative methods. You will come out of the course knowing an awful lot about very view topics. Contrast that with the student of today that sits in a "lecturer's" class and you will probably come out knowing very little about a lot of topics. The best case is to sit in on a lecturer's class AND take ownership in your education, work hard outside of class and you will end up with the best of both worlds... deep understanding of a lot of topics. Frankly, I prefer that STEM education to be primarly lecture format. It selects for the students who WANT to learn and are WILLING to put forth the effort. And these are the students that will be your future physician, will build that bridge you commute over every day etc etc. I wouldn't want a spoon-fed student doing either of those jobs.

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schultzjc 1 day ago Does gregor2 teach a STEM course? If so he/she is surprisingly resistant to quantitative evidence, all of which points to the lecture, poor communication skills as the primary reason for STEM dropout.

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grward 1 day ago Actually, I was wondering why, if it's so clear that lecturing is less effective that other ways in STEM programs, did we not hear about the success stories that would be associated with the other methods. The article seems to simply assume that the 63% of instructors using the lecture format are the ones for which student attrition is highest. Can we hear the evidence for that specific claim please? Here is an interesting quote from the article: "The association's five-year project started last year. As many as eight member universities will serve as test sites, within which two or three STEM departments will adopt approaches to developing syllabi and teaching courses that have a record of success. They will set learning goals and compare results with other departments and universities over two or three years. "We'll write articles and treat it the way it should be," Mr. Rawlings says, "namely, as a science research project."" If there is already quantitative evidence that applies to the STEM field, then why are they speaking as if it's only now being gathered. I teach in STEM and have tried all sorts of ideas, and have sat through countless presentations by instructors and researchers who have ideas, and I'm still waiting for the idea that has been shown to work. I'd be happy to drop the lecture format but, first, specific examples, please...

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recktenwaldg 22 hours ago Here's some recent publications that describe success with methods of instruction that enhance learning with alternatives to lecturing:

Louis Deslauriers, Ellen Schelew and Carl Wieman, "Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class", Science, vol. 332, 862 (2011), DOI: 10.1126/science.1201783, http://www.sciencemag.org/cont... David C. Haak, Janneke HilleRisLambers, Emile Pitre and Scott Freeman, *Increased Structure and Active Learning Reduce the Achievement Gap in Introductory Biology", Science, vol 332, 1213 (2011), DOI: 10.1126/science.1204820, http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...

Here is an article written for a broader audience

Carl Wieman, "Why Not Try a Scientific Approach to Science Education?", Change, Sept/Oct 2007, pp. 9-15, http://www.changemag.org/Archi...

Each of those articles has references for your further reading pleasure. If you would like a more comprehensive discussion in textbook format, I recommend

Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett and Marie K. Norman, How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching 2010, Wiley, ISBN 978-0-470-048410-4

There is an abundant literature. Instruction in Physics has been under active change for roughly two decades. Instructors in other STEM disciplines have also contributed to change.

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tmenzel 21 hours ago Thanks! I've ordered these to review. I am curious about their methods. While you state: "Instruction in Physics has been under active change for roughly two decades", notice that all these publications are from the last 2 years.

fortysomethingprof 20 hours ago That's because they continue to try to improve. Physics has been way ahead of other STEM areas in this regard.

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schultzjc 13 hours ago I just attended a conference (at HHMI) that featured 70 posters describing novel approaches to undergrad education, most of which eschew lecturing. I'm sure not all work, but plenty do. There is a lot going on in this area. Could always use more.

recktenwaldg 13 hours ago If you want to work the literature the other direction, here are three good starting points:

David Hestenes, Malcom Wells, and Gregg Swackhamer, "Force Concept Inventory", The Physics Teacher, vol 30, no 3, March 1992, pp 141-, http://tpt.aapt.org/resource/1...

Richard R. Hake, "Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses", American Journal of Physics, vol 66, no 1, January 1998, http://ajp.aapt.org/resource/1...

Lillian C. McDermott, "Physics Education Research -- the Key to Student Learning", American Journal of Physics, vol 69, no 11, November 2001, pp. 1127-1137, http://ajp.aapt.org

/resource/1...

The paper by Hestnes et al. is seminal. Hestenes et al. developed an instrument to determine whether students have learned fundamental concepts in physics, instead of memorizing a set of "facts", which in some cases turn out, in fact, not to be true. The Force Concept Inventory has been used in many studies to assess whether learning interventions have beneficial impacts. It has also inspired the development of concept inventories in other fields. Try a google search on "concept inventory" http://www.google.com/search?&...

Hake's paper provides evidence that alternatives to lecturing ("interactive engagement" is their descriptive expression) can result in better student learning. Notice the sample size!

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McDermott's paper summarizes her work in teaching "Physics by Inquiry", while also making the plea for thinking about instruction scientifically. The paper by Hestenes et al. meets the strict interpretation of my "two decades" criterion. The other work reports on efforts completed before the publication date. The papers published in 2011 cited in my earlier post are just recent examples of work that has been going on for quite a while.

procrustes 23 hours ago The quantitative evidence reported in the article is based on surveys of students. Since it is human nature to place the blame elsewhere, it is hardly surprising that they blame bad teaching rather than poor preparation or failure to work hard enough. That is not to say there isn't bad teaching in STEM courses, I have certainly encountered it myself, just that I don't find self-reporting compelling evidence of anything except opinion.

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archman 20 hours ago Absolutely correct. Students (and college admin) love new shinies.

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gerard_harbison 23 hours ago STEM dropout is not a bad thing, if the student simply isn't cut out for STEM.

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cwm4c 23 hours ago But close to half drop out for boredom or other reasons--and many of them are your very top students. Not being able to get the grades is rapidly on the decline as the reason to dropout, and we need to acknowledge that.

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gerard_harbison 23 hours ago Sorry, I don't see the top students drop out, and by and large the top students don't get bored.

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cwm4c 20 hours ago 2 years of data at our R1 show of those dropping out from STEM majors, we're losing half of our top 20% students, and 75% of our top 5%. One year's data at an Ivy counterpart of ours confirms their situation is worse. Yes, we may be happy to lose those that are bored, etc, but what if we can prevent it by our efforts? Certainly worth trying to get our best students the STEM degrees and nurture their interests.

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Socratease2 17 hours ago What are those percentages? Are you talking about student academic profiles at admission or their gpa ranking within the major? Do you count dropping out only from people who have been admitted into field or those dropping out during prerequisite, pre-admission phase? If you are losing half of your top 20% after they have been admitted, you really need to focus on what you are doing wrong. I see boredom is your go-to explanation, I sincerely doubt it. Mediocre and average students don't suffer from boredom, only top students? At face validity, that makes no sense. Plus, if you are only using major gpa as a way to identify who are the "top" students in a major and no other variables, I don't think that is going to produce useful information.

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abrower1234 21 hours ago Well, speaking as a biology professor, a lot of STEM is boring. If a student can't deal with massive amounts of data and the complex framework of "facts" necessary to interpret those data, then maybe STEM is not for that person.

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archman 20 hours ago Students dropping out of STEM because they are bored... wow. Now *that's* a fishtale I haven't actually heard before. I will have to add that to my list of doozies our science faculty can chuckle over around the watercooler. As other have posted, students mostly drop out of STEM because they simply cannot perform adequately enough.

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cwm4c 20 hours ago We previously thought so as well. Once we started collecting data on grades and reasons why they quit/changed majors, we were shocked also. Really surprised at the number of top students we were losing. Understand also when I say "bored" that encompasses interview responses like "bored," "lack of challenge,", "disinterest in repetive, linear curriculum" --things again mainly heard only from our top students (3.5-4.0 GPA over 1-2 years) We're looking at some changes, not completely radical as many suggested here, and it looks hopeful. 1st year, we reduced attrition 9%, hope to get to 20% by the 3rd year.

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archman 19 hours ago Wait, your data is partially based on *student opinions* ? Well shucks, if I were one of them fancy R1 college students and didn't get an A in organic chemistry or physics, I'd blame everyone but myself, too. I might pick some pretty weird reasons too, like

10/27/2012 9:02 AM

Lectures Still Dominate Science and Math Teaching - Faculty - The Chron...

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http://chronicle.com/article/Lectures-Still-Dominate/135402/?cid=at&ut...

"being bored". Ha ha. Get another evaluative tool.

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10/27/2012 9:02 AM