Postscript

We (the authors) are a team of STEM educators, scholars, and change agents, with decades of experience in the classroom and promoting systemic change in higher education. We represent a range of institution types, backgrounds, and perspectives. Though we do not represent every institution type, class size, or demographic, we think that the variety in our perspectives and experiences augments the scholarship on which this course is based. Importantly, we hope that you, as a college STEM instructor, find yourself inspired by these pages to rethink your students’ scientific learning experiences and retool how you craft those experiences.

Scientific Teaching content, before it was named, began as Biology Brought to Life, a student research guide for Plants, Parasites, and People, a biology course for first-year, non-science-major undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published in 1995 by Dr. Jo Handelsman and colleagues, the course also included a revolutionary companion guide for teaching assistants that described how to use active and cooperative learning approaches with the evidence to back up why. In the early 2000s, these materials grew to serve a broader audience outside the course and drew from the scholarship of teaching and learning, discipline-based education research, action research, evidence-based instructional practices, teaching-as-research, and others. The content, however, was unique in its focus on scientific disciplines and higher education. As content expanded and became codified, it became a set of hole-punched pages gathered in a three-ring binder. Later versions of fancy binders had pre-printed tabs to denote section breaks, but many of the early tabs were hand-written.

Regardless of format, each binder contained a fresh, new perspective on STEM teaching and learning because it leveraged the best educational approaches known at the time. It included a synthesis of the current state of recommended STEM education practices with content pulled from higher education, K-12 literature, and curriculum and instruction research, along with practical examples and tools for teaching. The scientific teaching binders served as the textbook for graduate student courses taught through the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching, and subsequently, starting in 2004, for the National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Education in Biology. Held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for many years, both programs modeled scientific teaching through their interactive formats, active learning approaches, and cooperative group projects. Each iteration of these programs informed an evolution of the scientific teaching body of knowledge. For example, backward design approaches, educational taxonomies, facilitator training content, and institutional transformation tips were added as a direct result of what we and our colleagues learned each time we led one of these programs.

In 2004, Dr. Handelsman and colleagues published an article in Science magazine, which both coined the “scientific teaching” term and served as a call to arms to reform how science was taught in higher education. Soon after, in the winter of 2006, Scientific Teaching was first printed as a book by Roberts & Co., and immediately moved to W.H. Freeman and Co. in 2007, where it could be bundled and freely distributed with STEM textbooks to reach more instructors. The published book swiftly became the foundation for two decades of graduate programs and national, regional, and local institutes held around the world. The book and its programs were cited as exemplary approaches to college STEM education reform in reports such as Vision and Change (Bauerle, 2011) and Engage to Excel (Advisors on Science and (US), 2012). Over 10,000 copies have been printed and distributed, and we estimate as many instructors have used the content or its derivatives.

Scientific Teaching was revolutionary at its first printing and many of its recommended practices have stood the test of time, but nearly two decades have passed. New interventions and research findings have blossomed in many fields – education research, social science, education psychology, inclusive learning, online and hybrid learning, discipline-based education research, and more – rendering many of the perspectives, practices, and philosophies from the first edition Scientific Teaching incomplete or outdated. Therefore, we assembled a diverse team of instructors with the expertise and experience to do again what scientific teaching does best: synthesize the current state of knowledge while providing practical guidance, examples, and tools. However, this version is (obviously) not a book. Instead, drawing on new learning principles, it is framed as an interactive, self-guided course that models scientific teaching practices.

Our goal is that the digital Scientific Teaching Course can position you and your colleagues to enact relevant and necessary STEM education improvements through the mid-21st century. We hope that the courses you teach using these principles will inspire a generation of college students – especially those from groups historically excluded from STEM – to see themselves as scientists and be equipped to address the scientific challenges that lie ahead.

From the author team,

Sarah Miller, Jo Handelsman, Jenny Knight, Sharleen Flowers, Mariah A. Knowles, Cara Gormally, Zakiya Kennedy, Taziah Kenney, Julia Nepper, Christine Pfund, Rebecca M. Price, Rou-Jia Sung, Cara Theisen, Sheela Vemu, and Michelle D. Withers