Ted Marchese (2006), former vice president of the American
Association for Higher Education (AAHE) and former editor of Change
magazine, in a "Carnegie Perspective"
<http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/perspectives/> titled "Whatever
Happened To Undergraduate Reform?" wrote [bracketed by lines
"MMMMMMMMMM. . . ."]:
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
In 2000 I left my post at the American Association for Higher
Education (AAHE) and the Change editorship to become a search
consultant. This year, hoping to catch up with the issues of
undergraduate reform I've cared deeply about throughout my career, I
signed up for several higher education conferences. I heard smart
presenters talk about the importance of general education, the
necessity of assessment, the imperatives of diversity, the need for
civic education. What I seldom heard was anything I hadn't heard back
in the '90s. It felt as though time had stood still. Since then, I've
been asking colleagues: Whatever happened to undergraduate reform?
Has that effort, once so vigorous and far-reaching, run out of new
things to say? Has it stalled? Did it die?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I present the reader with these questions: Is the hypothesis correct?
Are we indeed lacking new ideas? Have undergraduate reform efforts
stalled? If so, what would it take to change that?
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
From the standpoint of undergraduate introductory physics education,
reform is alive and thriving in at least a few universities, e.g.,
Harvard (Crouch & Mazur 2001), North Carolina State University
(Beichner & Saul 2004), MIT (Dori & Belcher 2004), the University of
Colorado at Boulder (Pollock 2004), and California Polytechnic State
University at San Luis Obispo (Hoellwarth, et al. 2005).
At those locations relatively ineffective traditional courses
(passive student lectures, recipe labs, and algorithmic-problem
exams) have been replaced with much more effective "active learning"
courses designed to promote conceptual understanding through
interactive engagement of students in heads-on (always) and hands-on
(usually) activities which yield immediate feedback through
discussion with peers and/or instructors.
A driver for such reform has been the development of valid and
consistently reliable diagnostic tests of conceptual understanding,
pioneered by Halloun and Hestenes (1985a,b_ at Arizona State
University. The course average pre-to-posttest *normalized* gain
(actual gain divided by maximum possible gain) on such tests yields a
DIRECT measure of the effectiveness of a course in promoting student
learning and thereby provides guidance as to the need for, and the
effectiveness of, reform initiatives.
But my suggestion Hake (2005) that the physics education reform
effort might serve as a model for the enhancement of student
higher-level learning in undergraduate education created a tsunami
similar to that created by a pebble dropped into Lake Michigan.
REFERENCES
Beichner, R.J & J.M. Saul. 2004. "Introduction to the SCALE-UP
(Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate
Programs) Project," in Proceedings of the International School of
Physics "Enrico Fermi" Course CLVI in Varenna, Italy, M. Vicentini
and E.F. Redish, eds. IOS Press. Amazon.com information at
<http://tinyurl.com/cwgrk >; online at
at <http://www.ncsu.edu/per/Articles/Varenna_SCALEUP_Paper.pdf> (1MB).
Dori, Y.J. & J. Belcher, J. 2004. "How Does Technology-Enabled Active
Learning Affect Undergraduate Students' Understanding of
Electromagnetism Concepts?" The Journal of the Learning Sciences
14(2), online as a 1 MB pdf at <http://tinyurl.com/cqoqt>.
Halloun, I. & D. Hestenes. 1985a. "The initial knowledge state of
college physics students." Am. J. Phys. 53:1043-1055; online at
<http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>. Contains the "Mechanics
Diagnostic" test, precursor to the "Force Concept Inventory."
Hoellwarth, C., M. J. Moelter, and R.D. Knight. 2005. " A direct
comparison of conceptual learning and problem solving ability in
traditional and studio style classrooms," Am. J. Phys. 73(5):
459-463; online at
<http://tinyurl.com/br88n>.
Marchese, T.J. 2002. "The New Conversations About Learning: Insights
From Neuroscience and Anthropology, Cognitive Science and Workplace
Studies," online at [Original link no longer available].
Pollock, S. 2004. "No Single Cause: Learning Gains, Student
Attitudes, and the Impacts of Multiple Effective Reforms," 2004
Physics Education Research Conference: AIP Conference Proceeding,
vol. 790; J. Marx, P. Heron, & S. Franklin, eds., pp. 137-140, online
as a 316 kB pdf at <http://tinyurl.com/9tfk4>.