{"id":339,"date":"2016-12-02T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T20:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice\/?p=339"},"modified":"2023-08-29T10:37:49","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T14:37:49","slug":"failure-to-launch-why-a-clever-idea-to-make-stem-relatable-never-took-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/edvice\/2016\/12\/02\/failure-to-launch-why-a-clever-idea-to-make-stem-relatable-never-took-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Failure to Launch: Why a Clever Idea to Make STEM Relatable Never Took Off"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cliff Rouder, Assistant Director, CAT<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nota Bene: This is a true classroom experience I had during my undergraduate student days.  Please fasten your seatbelts as we prepare for take-off.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picture it: a 900-seat auditorium at a major research university. My first day of introductory physics. My friends and I entered the massive lecture hall and settled in. Suddenly, we heard (and felt) a very loud rumbling noise coming from stage left. In a flash, we caught a glimpse of a man seated on what looked like a rocket-shaped go-cart racing across the stage. Applause, and then a collective sigh of relief. Surely this was not the \u201cweed out\u201d course we were warned about. Surely this was a professor who had thought about how to make this course meaningful and motivating. Surely we were going to get lots of practice and support. Well, turns out we were surely wrong.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things went from awesome to \u201cuh oh\u201d faster than that rocket. After our instructor disembarked, he put 900 copies of a one-page syllabus on a table and told us we could pick it up at the end of the class if<\/em> we thought we could pass the course after that first lecture. He then walked over to three massive blackboards and furiously wrote equations nonstop for the next 50 minutes. We, too, were furiously copying (and mis-copying) what he was writing, while not understanding a thing. We had no clue how the homework problems related to what he wrote on those blackboards, and he never helped us connect them. If you\u2019re still wondering what the rocket entrance had to do with the course, he never told us, at least not before my friends and I got our first exams back and made the unilateral decision to drop the course. The experience was enough to cause some of my friends to switch majors. \u201cHouston, we have a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although <\/strong>there are multiple factors involved in a student\u2019s decision to drop a STEM major<\/strong><\/a>, the good news <\/strong>is that what we do in our classrooms has the potential to positively impact<\/a> retention directly, or on potential mediators of retention<\/a> like reduced failure rate, improved exam scores, and self-efficacy. We now know a lot more about how learning works in the brain and the teaching strategies that can promote deep and lasting learning (you know, the kind that\u2019s more than just memorizing information the night before an exam and forgetting it the day after). And the best news of all is that incorporating some of these strategies into your courses is pretty doable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s Exchange EDvice!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How could \u201cProfessor Rocket\u201d have…<\/p>\n\n\n\n