White Paper on Promising Practices in Undergraduate STEM Education
No. 1: "Prepare a Set of Learning Outcomes: “the student will be expected to be able to do/?/? the following.” Frequently mentioned desirable attributes include critical thinking, lifelong learning, representation competence, interdisciplinary thinking, entrepreneurship, and systems thinking"... "rarely supported with a set of associated learning outcomes!" An important framework is related to "self assessment (an important component of lifelong learning)."
No. 2: Organize Students in Small Groups both during class and/or outside of class
Pedagogical approaches in which faculty members organize students in small groups for learning are varied, and include collaborative learning (Bruffee, 1984), cooperative learning (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1991), peer-led team learning (Gosser & Roth, 1998; Tien, Roth, & Kampmeier, 2001), team-based learning (Michaelson, Knight, & Fink, 2004) and peer instruction (Mazur, 1997). Also, other pedagogical approaches, such as problem-based learning (Boud & Feletti, 1997), project-based learning (Prince & Felder, 2006, 2007), service learning (Eyler & Giles, 1999), capstone design projects (Dutson, Todd, Magleby, & Sorensen, 1997), and inquiry-based learning (Lee, 2004) almost always involve organizing students in small groups.
No. 3: Organize Students in Learning Communities: ligadas por um tema interdisciplinar comum
No. 4: Scenario-based Content Organization: o conteúdo é disseminado em 1 ou mais contextos relevantes, juntamente com questões, desafios, problemas ou projetos relacionados com esses contextos.
Exemplos: Ex"problem-based learning, which originated in medical school curricula; project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, discovery learning, question-drive instruction, challenge-based learning, service learning, and model-eliciting activities (Diefes-Dux, Imbrie, Zawojewski, Capobianco, & Hjalmarson, 2004; Diefes-Dux & Moore, 2004; Diefes-Dux, Moore, Zawojewski, Imbrie, & Follman, 2004; Lesh, Hoover, Hole, Kelly, & Post, 2000)."
No. 5: Providing Students Feedback through Systematic Formative Assessment: avaliação para a aprendizagem, não para a avaliação!
Exemplos: "classroom response systems (Fies & Marshall, 2006), which is an element of peer instruction (Mazur, 1997) and question-driven instruction (Beatty et al., 2006), ... minute paper (Angelo & Cross, 1993; Stead, 2005) in which faculty members regularly ask students at the end of classroom sessions to address two questions that are similar to “What was the most important point that you took away from the lecture today?” and “What point for you remains the most unclear?"
Ainda não há estudos que comprovem a eficácia da avaliação formativa na aprendizagem pois nas comprovadas melhorias da aprendizagem centrada no aluno não é claro se os benefícios resultam do engajamento ativo dos estudantes na aprendizagem ou se do feedback formativo.
No. 6: Designing In-class Activities to Actively Engage Students
"Cooper et al (2000) state that faculty members who used active engagement strategies and were interviewed for their study “expressed consistent satisfaction that students in their classes are demonstrating one or more of these indicators of increased learning: much greater conceptual understanding, more complex critical-thinking skills, better class attendance, more independence in lab settings, and greater confidence"
No. 7: Undergraduate Research: integração num projeto de investigação com sob supervisão de um professor graduado.
No. 8: Faculty-initiated Approaches to Student-faculty Interactions "Since faculty-student interactions are an important factor in learning and persistence, faculty members could take the initiative in making connections with their students instead of waiting for students to visit them during office hours when there is a problem."
