Teaching and Learning
jstemwedel | May 24, 2009Science fair projects are due Tuesday morning. Can you guess what we're doing today?
The elder Free-Ride offspring tried to argue that preliminary experiments (growing crystals from solutions four different solids) had to be omitted from the project write-up. Why? Well, because the elder Free-Ride offspring had originally planned to use solutions of two additional solids in this experiment. It's unthinkable that anything was learned from growing four kinds of crystals rather than six! And reporting on unfinished experiments is just not done!
Or, the Free-Ride parental units hypothesized…
jstemwedel | May 22, 2009Bruce Weinstein ("The Ethics Guy" at BusinessWeek.com) offers advice on how to be ethical to the business school class of 2009.
His five nuggets of advice seem like good ones for anyone who is interested in being ethical. Two in particular jumped out at me:
1. LISTEN TO THE WHISPERS.
Frances Hesselbein, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Leader to Leader Institute (formerly the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management) and former CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, speaks of the importance of "listening to the whispers" you hear every time you're about to make a decision.…
jstemwedel | May 10, 2009Dr. Isis asked me to write a letter for her most excellent Letters to Our Daughters project, which she describes as follows:
When I was a graduate student, I took a physiology class in which I was given the assignment to recreate my scientific family tree. When I did, I found that my family tree is composed some brilliant scientists. But, my family tree is also composed entirely of men, plus me. The same is true of the tree from my postdoc. I have scientific fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, but no aunts, grandmothers, or mothers. As I considered my career path in science, I…
jstemwedel | May 5, 2009You know and I know that science is cool, but for some reason kids can be suspicious of our declarations to this effect. (Maybe it has to do with our enthusiasm for vegetables that they don't like, not to mention naps.)
However, Susan the Scientist is on a mission to let kids know that science rocks! Here's a taste:
Using science experiments to solve problems that come up in everyday life is cool. Playing with fire is cooler. (I dig the music, too, but let's pretend I didn't say that, lest it convince the kids that the music is lacking that Jonas sais quoi.)
Of course, Susan the…
jstemwedel | May 4, 2009One of the interesting developments within the tribe of science is the way that blogs, email lists, and things of that ilk have made public (or at least, more public) conversations within a field that used to happen only in private.
The discussions of Aetogate on the VRTPALEO list are just one notable example, but email lists and blogs also host discussions in the wake of retractions of journal papers, investigations of allegations of scientific misconduct, and other sorts of professional shenanigans. While some of the people in these conversations cloak their identities in pseudonyms,…
jstemwedel | April 29, 2009Dr. Isis has some rollicking good discussions going on at her pad about who might care about blogs, and what role they might play in scientific education, training, and interactions. (Part one, part two.)
On the second of these posts, a comment from Pascale lodged itself in my brain:
I think a lot of impressionable girls, especially in that middle-school age group, get the idea that they can't be good at science or math if they like clothes, makeup, and boys. Is it the science/math sterotype that is the problem, or is it that girls make other choices to pursue these alternate interests? "I…
jstemwedel | March 27, 2009Well, the school science fair looms (as school science fairs are wont to do). While the actual event isn't until May, we have reached the point at which the science teacher is vetting the proposed projects.
Presumably the vetting is to ensure that the kids are directing their efforts toward a project that is actually do-able in the available time, and that it's focused on a question that is "scientific" rather than a matter of opinion.
A friend on the elder Free-Ride offspring's soccer team had a project idea rejected because it fell in the realm of opinion. I asked, "What was the project…
jstemwedel | March 2, 2009Times are tough all around these days. However, at schools like mine, a large public university with a population that includes a significant number of students who are older than traditional college age, are the first in their families to go to college, and/or were in economically precarious situations before the current economic crisis, the situation feels especially dire.
When I started teaching at San José State University in August of 2002, the U.S. had not yet gone to war in Iraq. By my third semester of teaching here, I was starting to lose students mid-semester because their…
jstemwedel | February 28, 2009You knew the California budget shortfall was going to have an impact on higher education in the state. But maybe you didn't know that the pain will not be distributed evenly. Last weekend, John Engell, a colleague of mine from San Jose State University (and currently chair of the Department of English & Comparative Literature), examined the pain that may be visited on our university in an opinion piece he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News:
Almost no one knows that this fall, San Jose State University will absorb one-third of all student enrollment cuts in the 23-campus California…
jstemwedel | February 25, 2009In last night's address to the joint session of Congress, President Obama said:
The third challenge we must address is the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America.
In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity - it is a pre-requisite.
Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any…
jstemwedel | February 24, 2009I've been watching an interesting discussion unfolding at DrugMonkey, prompted by a post at Science Bear's Cave, about whether not irritating your lab group's principal investigator ought to be your highest priority. As DrugMonkey notes, such a strategy can have bad consequences:
If there is a scientific trainee who fears to mention to the Boss that the printers aren't working, this trainee sure as hell isn't going to mention "Oh gee, I think that figure you are so amped about from that other postdoc is totally faked". And who knows how far this PI-pleasing attitude might carry one.
Is the…
jstemwedel | February 22, 2009We're back at the Monterey Bay Aquarium today. Shortly after our arrival, the kids are up to their elbow in touch-tank water. Then, the younger Free-Ride offspring gets critical.
"The decorator crabs here aren't very decorated."
"It's true," says the volunteer working the touch-tank. "These decorator crabs can't smell any predators in their environment, so they figure they don't need to try to hard."
After a few moments with a deeply furrowed brow, the younger offspring asks, "How can I smell like a decorator crab predator and get the crabs to decorate themselves better?"
The volunteer…
greengabbro | February 17, 2009I got a request for advice from Maryam, an old undergrad committee-comrade-in-arms, which I have mangled for clarity:
To make a long story short, I'm co-teaching a communication class to engineers and I want to introduce them to science blogging. I'm planning to have them write brief essays about classic science papers (similar to the Beginnings of Immunofluoresence), and then post the essays to a class blog.
The main instructor of the class is a rhetorician, so we put emphasis on rhetorical situations and interpersonal communication. I wanted to introduce blogging because it's a new and…
jstemwedel | February 2, 2009
I've been derelict in my duty to inform you that 2009 has been declared the Year of Science, which is, of course, just an excuse to celebrate science-y goodness every day. Each month has a theme and a variety of options for exploring that theme.
For February, the theme is evolution (in part because some fellow named Darwin has a birthday this month). In addition to getting a good dose of Darwiniana, you can check in on scientists sharing their thoughts on evolution and science more generally, explore evolutionary thought and the process of evolution, look at the connections between…
greengabbro | January 26, 2009In addition to helping judge this year's Open Laboratory science blogging anthology, I'm also the production editor (i.e., typesetting jockey). So as I go through, reading the entries in much greater detail than I ever would otherwise, I'm noticing a couple of things:
All of the pieces are either about biology, or professional "life in science" stuff. Geology is represented this year by Kim's piece and my own, and is actually in good shape relative to physics and chemistry. But that's not saying much - the volume as a whole is very life-centric.
Some of the pieces, um, I'm not sure what the…
greengabbro | January 20, 2009One of my New Year's blogolutions was to clear out my to-blog folder, and bring closure to my unfinished drafts by simply posting them as-is. This is one of those drafts. Disorganized paragraphs, unfinished sentences, and general incoherence enhance the natural character and beauty of a half-written blog post and should not be considered flaws or defects.
Draft date: June 30, 2008
I just checked my watch, and apparently it's time for another science blogging meta wankfest! This time, Blake Stacey is complaining that we don't teach science with our blogs:
My thesis is that it's not yet…
jstemwedel | January 6, 2009Or is it the kind of thing those other people do?
In the car yesterday, I caught a story on Marketplace that was looking for insight into why people on Wall Street cheat. In the piece, host Kai Ryssdal interviewed Duke University behavioral economist Dan Ariely about research conducted (with college students, of course) on cheating.
The set-up was that the students were asked to solve a set of math problems, and that they'd be paid (50 cents) for each one they got correct. While it sounds like some of the students were only paid after they completed the set of problems, other groups of…
jstemwedel | December 7, 2008In spring of 2007, after nearly two years without a contract, the faculty of the 23 campuses of the California State University system (of which my university is a part) voted to ratify a contract. Among other things, that contract included raises to help our salaries catch up to the cost of living in California. (Notice the word "help" in that sentence; the promised raises, while making things better, don't quite get the whole job done.)
The negotiations for this contract were frustratingly unproductive until my faculty union organized a rolling strike that was planned as a set of two-…
jstemwedel | November 20, 2008... and the university, in turn, fires the professor.
You've probably already seen this story. Loye Young, an adjunct professor at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, warned his students (as we all do) against plagiarism. Indeed, as reported by Inside Higher Ed, he included this statement in his fall course syllabus for his management information systems course:
No form of dishonesty is acceptable. I will promptly and publicly fail and humiliate anyone caught lying, cheating, or stealing. That includes academic dishonesty, copyright violations, software piracy, or any other…
jstemwedel | October 16, 2008Over at Effect Measure, Revere takes issue with a science educator's hand-wringing over what science students (and scientists) don't know. In a piece at The Scientist, James Williams (the science educator in question) writes:
Graduates, from a range of science disciplines and from a variety of universities in Britain and around the world, have a poor grasp of the meaning of simple terms and are unable to provide appropriate definitions of key scientific terminology. So how can these hopeful young trainees possibly teach science to children so that they become scientifically literate? How…