5 Key Questions about Modern STEM Teaching and Learning

​Near the start of the academic year, many faculty members across the College of Natural Sciences welcome guests into their classrooms--fellow educators who are invited to observe active-learning strategies and award-winning teaching in action. This is Teaching Discovery Day in the College of Natural Sciences, and it is just one element of a college-wide push toward lifting up excellence in educational activities.

Sarah Eichhorn is the executive director of TIDES.

Today's students are digital natives, accustomed to instant access to information and can quickly navigate to online content for any occasion. This challenges us to rethink STEM curriculum and really focus in on concepts, skills and habits of mind that we want to impart to students as opposed to information recall. Everything from teaching material in course-sized bundles, the use of traditional textbooks, and the existence of majors has been questioned. It will be a challenge for science educators to rethink our instructional practices for our digital native students. We'll need to determine what traditional components still make sense and what new innovations might improve learning.

How does one know when students are effectively engaged with what they're learning?

This is actually a surprisingly complex and difficult question. Determining effective student engagement requires us to really think about what we want students to be able to do after taking our courses and then figure out how to measure that outcome. I think most educators have had the experience of grading an exam and being surprised and frustrated to find the students did poorly on questions the educators felt they had emphasized in class extensively and gone over multiple times.

Technology has transformed many aspects of how students engage with learning. What do you see as the greatest opportunity related to technology in science education?

I see personalization and increased feedback as the most transformative opportunities afforded by new educational technologies. IBM created an artificial intelligence-based machine called "Watson," which learned to play Jeopardy and went on to beat the best human contestants. Recently this technology has been made available to educators to provide intelligent feedback to students. For example, Georgia Tech had an online computer science course with a teaching assistant named "Jill Watson," which was secretly IBM's artificial intelligence platform. This virtual TA successfully answered a myriad of student questions in the online forums, and the majority of the students never detected that "Jill" was not human. I am excited about the prospect of leveraging artificial intelligence to answer routine and repetitive student questions to free up instructor time for richer student interactions. I am also enchanted by the prospects of using machine learning to create intelligent tutoring systems which identify students' individual errors and misconceptions, provide targeted feedback and create personalized learning pathways to help each student navigate course content.

I am really delighted by the CNS Teaching Discovery Day. Faculty typically have many opportunities to see their colleagues' research though journals, conferences, seminars, etc., but often have less insight into what their peers do in the classroom. The Teaching Discovery Day is a fantastic opportunity for new (and veteran) instructors to observe colleagues' teaching and get ideas for approaches that may suit their classrooms.

I am hoping TIDES can also be a source of effective support for new instructors. We just announced a "STEM Teaching Hacks" workshop series for fall, and we plan to follow this up with many more professional development opportunities for faculty who want either a quick tweak or a more profound revamp of their instructional practices.