Carl Wieman: Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education

Carl Wieman talking about STEM education reform at AAU-CIRCLE conference in 2015In this talk, “Taking a Scientific Approach to Science and Engineering Education,” Carl Wieman (Department of Physics and Graduate School of Education, Stanford University; Nobel Prize Winner in Physics), discussed transforming education, guided by insights from research on teaching and learning.

Please follow this link to the website of The Center for the Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education (CIRCLE) for Wieman’s presentation slides and a forthcoming video of the talk.

Research on how people learn is now revealing much more effective ways to teach, learn, and evaluate learning than the methods used in traditional science classes. The combination of this research with information technology is setting the stage for a new approach to teaching and learning that can provide the relevant and effective science education that is needed for the 21st century. Although the focus of the talk is on undergraduate science teaching (where the data are the most compelling), the underlying principles come from studies of the general development of expertise and apply across disciplines.

The event took place on August 22 from 4:00-5:00 in Knight Hall, Room 110 (Emerson Auditorium), Danforth Campus.

If you have questions about the event, please contact Erin Solomon, TIES Program Manager.

Find out more about this initiative and Wieman’s work in The Record.

This talk marks the beginning of a new initiative at WashU: the Transformational Initiative for Education in STEM (TIES) at Washington University in St. Louis aims to support STEM faculty as they transform courses from using primarily lecture-based teaching methods to primarily using evidence-based teaching methods. Faculty and departments will be supported by new TIES Fellows and the TIES program team as they transform their courses and curricula. TIES is supported by The Office of the Provost.