BOSTON — General education courses pay off for American students in terms of long-term science literacy. 

Recent research showed that adults in the United States were second place in the world when it came to scientific literacy, and they found that general science college education classes for nonscience majors were largely to thank for it.  

To determine what level of quantitative and scientific reasoning entering students bring to Michigan State University and what is the impact of the general education science course on improving students’ reasoning skills, Diane Ebert-May, an MSU plant biology professor, and a team of scientists and statisticians, collaborated with faculty at James Madison University. They developed learning goals for scientific and quantitative reasoning and an instrument to assess them.

Ebert-May, Jon Miller, professor of integrative studies at MSU, and two other scientists discussed how institutions teach and assess quantitative and scientific reasoning in a symposium, entitled "Science for Tomorrow’s Citizens and Leaders," today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting. 

“If we want all of our students to achieve quantitative reasoning and scientific reasoning, we must think about it as an entire academic community,” Ebert-May said. “Our goal is to involve all faculty in the process of assessing quantitative and scientific reasoning. Together we can use the data we gather from students over time to guide our decisions about curricular change.” 

They began this process by inviting faculty from across campus to prioritize eight objectives for quantitative and scientific reasoning. For example, faculty ranked highly the importance of students describing the methods of inquiry that lead to scientific knowledge and the ability to distinguish science from pseudoscience and nonscience.  

“Feedback from faculty will enable us to create an assessment instrument that measures students’ achievement of those objectives,” Ebert-May said. “All of which are essential to an educated population in this increasingly complex world.”

The Qualitative and Scientific Reasoning project is funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Office of Provost at MSU.

For more information, go to http://special.newsroom.msu.edu/aaas/index.php. 

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