Last week I attended a talk by Carl Wieman about the approach to teaching science (at university level) that his eponymous Science Education Initiative promotes. Briefly, he advocates paying serious attention to the research literature on how students actually learn, which seems rather obvious but apparently is rarely done. Some of the statistics he gave were quite depressing: student recall of basic concepts as measured by standard tests is about 30% for traditional lecture courses, and students’ way of thinking is usually more novice-like after taking such courses than before. He advocates using “clickers” to allow instant anonymous feedback in lectures, and structuring lectures around key nonobvious questions to encourage student discussion.

I found it pretty compelling and hope to see it tried out in my own department soon.