Fall Colloquium on Undergraduate Education

By Monica Friedlander

The book sitting on your desk is radioactive — and so are you, unless you’ve been dead for long while. Surprised? These are the kind of jarring yet elementary scientific facts that Professor Richard Muller hurls at his students early in his course to grab their attention, spark their interest in science, and keep them engaged for the duration.

Regardless of their preferred teaching methods, these are general teaching goals espoused by all three panelists who participated in the Fall Colloquium on Undergraduate Education, sponsored by Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science. Entitled “The Future of Science Education,” the event featured Paul Kelter, a former chemistry professor who now teaches education at the Northern Illinois University; Deborah Nolan, a Berkeley professor of statistics and dean of L&S’s Mathematical and Physical Sciences Division; and Professor Richard Muller, who teaches Cal’s world-renowned course on “Physics for Future Presidents.”

While Kelter and Muller engaged in friendly debate over the merits of their respective educational approaches, Deb Nolan focused on specific tools available to instructors today to meet the new challenges of science in the 21st Century.

A common thread for all panelists was the need to move away from conventional instructional methodologies, take risks, and employing new tools to connect with students.

Paul Kelter led off by laying out a passionate case for what he called “question-based classrooms,” arguing that questions are the most powerful teaching tools to attract students and develop inquisitive minds.

“Through our questions we direct the thinking of our students in a way that a typical PowerPoint lecture with the lights turned off cannot,” he said.

A typical question for his chemistry class would have been: “Which is more effective: to recycle aluminum cans or to use native aluminum to produce the 93 billion cans that we have otherwise recycled over the past year?”

This inquisitive approach, Kelter said, lies at the basis of both the scientific method and the teaching process. “The purpose of teaching is to make students rational independent learners, and the purpose of science is the same: a rational approach to learning and use of knowledge to solve interesting problems,” he said.

Kelter also challenged Berkeley to rise to its reputation of being the top-ranked public institution in the country by setting an example for other universities to emulate. He was referring both to the quality of instruction and the institution’s ability to successfully include and teach all students, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or other aspects of their personal background.

“We can only put Berkeley first as a model of instructional practice if the model creates the conditions for success for all students,” Kelter said. “This model must assume that students can learn and that the outcome of the learning should be the same for all students,” he said. 

Muller supported Kelter’s overarching goals but took exception to his emphasis on starting lectures with questions. “Questions can intimidate,” he said. “Poor students may not know the answer and be intimidated. It’s a little tricky.” Instead, he chooses to draw them in with amazing facts about science — what he calls “backwards physics.”

“I start with the most interesting questions about the world,” he said. “When I talk about radioactivity, I tell them about cancer and radiation illness and death, and about how Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated using radiation. And after an hour of that, they’re dying to know what’s an alpha particle and a beta particle.”

The success of Muller’s approach is hard to question. His Physics for Future Presidents class has gone from 34 students to the maximum allowed of 512. The course is webcast and viewed in 89 countries around the world. 

Muller decried traditional methods of teaching introductory physics, which rely heavily on math and are generally targeted to physics majors. Physics, Muller believes, should be understood by everyone — from the freshman student to presidents and other world leaders and policy makers. In fact, he said, that’s exactly why he started his now-famous course: “I perceived that world leaders are making mistakes because they don’t understand elementary physics,” Muller said. Hence the title of his course.

Today’s high-tech world demands basic scientific knowledge of everyone, Muller emphasized, asking his audience why we expect our president to understand the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims but not between the different kinds of nuclear bombs.

“Our society has become too smug about not knowing science,” he said. “Physics majors are embarrassed that they don’t know much about Shakespeare, but English majors are not so embarrassed that they don’t know much about physics.”
 
Deb Nolan shifted focus from general education topics to the rapidly-changing technology of our society and the tools available to both scientists and science teachers. To connect with students today, Nolan said, instructors must move out of their comfort zone and learn new tools that make teaching math and science more intuitive and attractive to young people.

“I ask instructors to take on the courage to try different things and keep abreast of what’s going on in the scientific world in terms of data and teaching and preparing our student for future scientific research,” she said.

Nolan started off with a 1962 quote by statistician John Tukey on which she based her entire her presentation: “We must expect to tackle more realistic problems than our teachers did and expect our successors to tackle problems that are more realistic than those we ourselves dare to tackle.”

Never was that assumption more true than today, she said, given our technologically-advanced and rapidly-changing world, she said. The ubiquitness of data alone changes the way we do science. “Data are more complex, richer, and larger than even five years ago. But what’s really different is that these data are now readily available to researchers, educators and the general public.”

As a result, educational institutions and teachers must join the open source society and share resources with everyone.

Computation also offers revolutionary tools, Nolan said, such as computer simulations that can reach students on an intuitive level like never before. 

Finally, she said, teacher-student interaction must change as students become engaged in new means of communication, such as social media and discussion forums.

“Students are technical natives, Nolan said. “We are technical immigrants.”

With both teaching and science having to adjust to rapidly advancing technologies and generations of teachers, the debate over how to instill in students a passion for math and science will continue. Meanwhile students will continue to be engaged in their learning by passionate teachers who use a variety of different methodologies but who share the same passion for their profession.

“The focus on intellect that characterizes lifelong, curious learning is what a university education offers,” Kelter said. No doubt, all panelists and their audience agreed.