Two equally critical dimensions of the work of scientists remain absent from undergraduate classrooms: a) how scientists ground their research in the questions, approaches, and context of other discoveries; and b) how scientists communicate within and beyond their community what they themselves are learning from their own explorations. Both of these skill sets can be honed by reading scientific literature. Science, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is in a prime position to lead an effort to integrate this approach into the classroom. This award supports the research and development of educational resources capitalizing on recently published papers in Science. Our initiative, called "Science in the Classroom," introduces undergraduates to the scientific process by using contemporary scientific papers, taken from Science and translated into tools for learning by an expert team of scientists and educators, with the goal of exposing students to primary data sets. The project encourages students to assume the persona of the scientist by guiding them through the process of posing questions, designing experiments to answer these questions, analyzing the data resulting from the experiments, and working toward new conclusions in response to the analysis. It also engages students in understanding, first-hand, the process of scientific communication, through which scientists explain their progression from question to experiments to data to conclusions, while also generating the next set of questions for themselves and their peers. This award,will result in a refined and pilot-tested resource, as well as a guide with useful and effective pedagogy.
In December of 2011, we hired Confluence Corporation, a consulting firm specializing in information technology and Web design for non-profit organizations, to take over for our internal Web team as we had reached limits with them regarding both time and expertise. Confluence provided us with a usability report including specific recommendations on how to make the website more streamlined and user friendly. In January 2012 our independent evaluator, Robert Tai (University of Virginia), delivered the final report on the user surveys from the beta-testing for our pilot website (developed in-house). We used this feedback, coupled with the usability report, to redesign our website. Our advisory board was involved in the redesign as well. We had two conference calls (and ad hoc discussions as needed) to update and discuss redesign progress and they provided comments on our progress at two separate points during the redesign. Confluence began our website redesign in January, 2012 and completed work in August 2012. This version of the website included the addition of two new research papers as well as a peer-reviewed user guide for teachers, activity sections for students, and a link to the beta-version of our "Education Portal." The work took longer than expected to complete, however we are pleased with the final product: www.scienceintheclassroom.org In September 2012, to coincide with the new school year, we launched a beta-testing period for our new website. We worked with our independent evaluator, Robert Tai, to design a user survey available in three categories: student pre-survey, to be taken before students used the site, student post-survey, to be taken after students used the site, and a teacher survey, to be used by educators who had either used to resource in their classroom or had viewed the resource with the intent to provide feedback. We marketed this beta-testing period by reaching out to our many education contacts, speaking and presenting at conferences and workshops, and collaborating with the AAAS marketing team and our colleagues in the AAAS Education and Human resources department. Bruce Alberts also sent many personal e-mails to his education contacts announcing the testing phase and encouraging participation. The survey was open from September 2012 through December 2012. In February of 2013, we hired Isovera, a web development firm specializing in Drupal solutions, to take over for our previous web developers (Confluence) as we had reached limits with them regarding both time and expertise. Isovera provided us with a usability report including specific recommendations on how to make the website more streamlined and user friendly. In March 2013 our independent evaluator, Robert Tai, delivered the final report on the user surveys from the beta-testing for our website during the fall semester of 2013. We used this feedback, coupled with the usability report, to finalize the design our website. We also worked with Isovera to design and develop a sister website, the Science Education Portal, where Science content relating to science education is freely available to download. Our new Advisory Board became active in January of 2013. We had a very productive conference call to discuss the redesign progress and to have fresh input from our new Advisors. Board Members provided comments on our progress at two separate points during the final development of the website and we had an additional conference call to discuss and debate their thoughts and ideas as the website progressed. Our latest version of the website (October 1, 2013) includes a total of 6 research papers, each with complementary "university/college" and "high school" versions. The ‘high school" version focuses on one figure from the larger research report. We have also developed a user guide for teachers, activity sections for students, and a link to the "Science Education Portal." In January 2012 we submitted a TUES Type 2 grant that was ultimately funded. We seamlessly transitioned to this grant in June of 2013 in order to continue to refine, update, and expand Science in the Classroom. We will be publically launching both websites, complete with an accompanying Editorial in Science and an aggressive AAAS Marketing Campaign, in October of 2013.
