STEM Ed Announcement: Fostering Scientific Literacy

["Mort Sternheim" <mort@k12s.phast.umass.edu>]

This is a UMass Amherst program
 Contact Information is below.
 ===========================
 
 Monday, Feb 6, 2012 at 2:00 PM
 in the Computer Science Building room 203.
 
 
 Fostering Scientific Literacy in Bioengineering Hybrid Courses
  
 Yehudit Judy Dori
 Dean, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
 Monday, Feb 6, 2012 at 2:00 PM Computer Science Building Rm 203
 UMass Amherst
 
 Abstract
 
 
 The study focuses on fostering scientific literacy in hybrid
 undergraduate/graduate courses within biomedical engineering
 programs. Our research goal was to investigate the effect of hybrid
 courses and reading articles on scientific literacy of bio-medical
 engineering students. About 100 undergraduate and graduate students
 participated in one or two of the courses titled From Cell to
 Tissue and Tissue Engineering during the academic year 2010-2011.
 The courses required active participation in the face-to-face
 lectures which were recorded and made available for students to
 view at their convenience.  The students also participated  in
 weekly asynchronous forum discussions of state-of-the-art
 scientific articles conducted via the course website. Research
 tools included pre- and post-questionnaires based on adapted
 scientific articles. The questionnaires included three open-ended
 questions focusing on question posing, identifying the article
 structure, and experiment design skills. 
 Students scientific literacy average gain was positive, indicating
 that these hybrid courses have increased the students question
 posing, identifying article structure, and experiment design
 skills. Moreover, taking the two courses in sequence yielded the
 best results in post average scores for the three skills examined,
 pointing to the need for on-going practicing of these skills. This
 study sheds light on the importance of practicing scientific
 literacy in higher education via the integration of face-to-face
 sessions and on-line discussions of scientific articles.
  
 Metacognition and the ability to pose questions in chemical
 education
  
 Yehudit Judy Dori
 Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
 Monday, Feb 6, 2012 at 2:00 PM CS Rm 203
 
 
 Abstract
 Question posing is a higher order thinking skill, and as such it is
 linked to metacognitive knowledge. In the talk I will describe two
 related studies which investigate the effect of exposing high
 school chemistry students to a metacognitive tool for posing
 complex questions and developing reading strategies aimed at
 understanding adapted scientific articles. Our specially-designed
 tool was found to improve students' knowledge of cognition and
 regulation of cognition. The ability to pose complex questions,
 assisted by metacognitive knowledge, contributes to improvement of
 students understanding of chemical phenomena and scientific
 research. Combining our two studies and the metacognitive tool, we
 have developed and introduced a question complexity model that
 students and teachers alike can use for both generating and
 classifying questions. We also found relationship between a
 students high metacognitive knowledge and her/his ability to pose
 complex questions.
 
  
 Beverly Woolf <bev@cs.umass.edu> 
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