Nobel laureate Carl Wieman has left his physics lab and has halted his cutting-edge research to rock the academic world with some frank news. Universities are doing a terrible job of teaching science, he says. It's time to try something new.
"This seems like such an obvious thing to do, but people never see a problem unless things change for the worse," Prof. Wieman, 56, explained during a brief stop in Toronto.
It is no exaggeration to say Prof. Wieman, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 2001, is on a mission.
This year he pulled up stakes from the University of Colorado to establish the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia. The move was prompted by a $12-million commitment from UBC to his vision for transforming science education. Prof. Wieman has put $50,000 toward the project.
His aim is to use scientific research methods to show that the standard lecture for teaching science is outdated and goes against many of the ways the human brain is known to work. He quotes studies that show students retain only about 30 per cent of the concepts presented in lectures, and others that find them unable to say what the lecture they just attended was about. Other research has found students' interest in science actually decreases after they take a university course.
He hopes to gather enough evidence over the next five years working with faculty at UBC and the University of Colorado to make a case for change. He wants professors to stop lecturing and begin to engage students through questions and group discussions and teach them to think like scientists, rather than just recite facts.
The physicist believes his work can transform not just science education, but society, as good science instruction trickles down from universities to primary and secondary schools through the education of future teachers.
Prof. Wieman is not the first educator to observe that students retain more information if they are engaged in active learning rather than passively listening to a professor. What is different about his work at UBC is the scale of the project, which is focused on changing the teaching approach of entire departments.
"Lots of people are seeing that things should be done better, but they aren't thinking about what is required to take it to the next level. In order to really change thinking at an organization, you have got to get a whole department to take this seriously," said Prof. Wieman, who counts change-management guru John Kotter among his advisers.
At UBC, a handful of professors have begun to test his theories.
Sara Harris, an instructor in earth and ocean sciences, said she is thinking differently about her role for the 500 students taking the department's popular natural-disasters course. "We have to change from an information provider to an opportunity provider," she said. "We have to shift learning to the individual student."
Prof. Harris pointed out that no professor of literature would spend a class reading a novel to students. But in science, she said, it has become common to recite the information in the textbook.
Even with his new centre and the strong support of UBC, Prof. Wieman described his efforts so far as a "qualified success."
His greatest disappointment is that others outside the academic world have not taken up his cause. Before he moved to B.C., he wrote 19 proposals to foundations looking for support. He was betting that his move to Canada would generate enough buzz to get the outside investment he believes is needed to make his work successful.
"I was perhaps naively hoping that coming up here and making a big splash and giving $50,000 of my own money would cause a lot more people in business and foundations to say 'we really care about this,' " he said. "There are things that the outside world says we value and we will give you money to do that. As long as student learning does not fall into that category, it is going to be hard to convince the skeptics."
During a cab ride between campuses in Toronto, Prof. Wieman worried that he is preaching to the converted. At the University of Toronto, his talk was closed to the news media so that professors could speak freely about his ideas, a spokeswoman said.
"I'm still learning how to sell it," said Prof. Wieman, who confided that he feels out of place in a tie. "I have got to generate interest. We are looking at trying to change something that has been static for a long time. It would be naive to think it will happen overnight."
