University of British Columbia - case study
Putting broad-based change into action: The Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia
Change can be challenging, even on a small scale. But the University of British Columbia is thinking big, working to transform undergraduate science teaching in as many departments and classes as possible, through the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative.
Under way since 2007, the $12-million project has encouraged the adoption of evidence-based teaching practice, treating the teaching of science as a scientific process in itself.
Departments are encouraged to establish what students should learn, measure what they are actually learning, adapt teaching practice and curriculum – including the use of technology and research findings – to achieve the desired learning outcomes, and disseminate and adopt those approaches that work.
Guiding the change is cognitive research that shows true expertise comes from extended mental grappling with problems rather than from attempts to insert facts into students’ heads.
That’s where “interactive engagement” practices come in, such as the use of clicker questions, in-class small-group discussion and problem-solving, as well as other activities. Online pre-reading assignments and quizzes, as well as pre- and post-testing help instructors to closely gauge how well students are grasping concepts and where they need help.
Four years into the project, there is now “a lot of evidence” that there is much more interactive student engagement going on in UBC science classes, even large ones with several hundred students, says Sarah Gilbert, the initiative’s acting director.
There’s also evidence it’s working. A study published in Science in 2011 shows that UBC physics students doubled their engagement and learning of complex physics concepts, as well as increased their attendance, when interactive teaching approaches were used.
“The engagement drops off if the instructor starts lecturing a lot,” says Dr. Gilbert about the typical pattern seen in classes using interactive teaching.
What does it take? The initiative has proceeded on the basis that pedagogical change must happen at the departmental level and has to involve the majority of faculty there. And while it should not cost more money once the change is up and running, the process of making change does require extra support and resources. The Wieman initiative works with a model of department-based science teaching and learning fellows who are expert in their discipline, and are hired by the department to work with faculty in the development of learning goals and assessing both learning and the progress of change. They are paid for out of funds provided to the department by the initiative.
So far, seven departments are involved – including statistics and math – with UBC’s earth and ocean sciences department farthest along in the transformation. Some 60 per cent of faculty in that department are recognized to have fundamentally changed their teaching practice.
Named for the Nobel prize-winning physicist who first led the initiative, Dr. Wieman is currently on leave from UBC to serve as the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy’s associate director on science, under U.S. President Barack Obama.
The work he started continues, as “one of a number of big initiatives” making dramatic impacts on teaching at UBC, says Harry Hubball, the university’s senior advisor on teaching and learning and director of its Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
That institute, for example, gets faculty seconded to it to help carry out its work. Recent initiatives include a coordinated approach to curriculum renewal and developing a scholarly and campus-wide approach to the peer review of teaching. As well, since 1998 UBC has offered a faculty certificate on teaching and learning in higher education.
And the university recently set up its own 3M National Teaching Fellows Council, capitalizing on the collective expertise of the university’s 3M National Teaching award winners.
By carrying out projects that make use of the wisdom already at the university, Dr. Hubball says improving teaching practice is “not always a case of more money. It’s often a case of joining the dots.”
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