USING SCIENCE TO TEACH SCIENCE: MOTIVATIONS, METHODS AND TOOLS

Faculty and teachers understand the power of engaging students directly with data and are tremendously enthusiastic about the possibilities of incorporating data-rich activities in their teaching. Four workshops offered over the past 18 months illuminate why we are so excited, offer a diversity of models for designing activities, and provide resources that help explain why working with data is effective and how learning in this context can be assessed.

Our enthusiasm reflects the desire to empower students to solve problems, to place learning in an exciting and authentic real world context that motivates learning, and to illuminate students’ understanding of the nature of science. Data-rich activities provide abundant opportunities to motivate students to engage in learning, to integrate learning of facts and skills, and to build on prior knowledge—all factors that are identified by research as fundamental to the learning process (How People Learn, 1999, NRC). Data- rich activities can place learning in a context that enhances students’ ability to use information in new situations.

Two challenging aspects of teaching with data are 1) designing the activity to match the level of student expertise and 2) creating assessments that capture learning beyond factual recall. Discussions of design and assessment frameworks and examples of successful activities presented at the workshops provide helpful resources for faculty designing their own activities. Finding and accessing appropriate data and associated tools are also often difficult. Workshop participants provide a variety of scenarios and suggestions for data providers to facilitate educational use of scientific data. For further information or to contribute examples see http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/usingdata/index.html http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/globaldata02/index.html