Teaching Tips: Innovations in Undergraduate Science Instruction

Like a spirited idea exchange among experienced professors, Teaching Tips: Innovations in Undergraduate Science Instruction brings you the best thinking from campuses nationwide about how to engage undergraduate science students. Published to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Society for College Science Teachers (SCST), Teaching Tips is a quick-read compilation of more than 50 innovative approaches that SCST members have found especially effective.

The book is organized into three parts:

1) Pedagogical Practices includes using instant messaging as an involvement tool, encouraging active learning in large classes, and using "peer coercion" to stimulate teamwork

Assessment Activities covers pretests and post-tests to encourage more effective learning, Web-based warm-up exercises to assess student misconceptions, and poetry-writing exercises to encourage creative thinking in the sciences

Content Challenges offers approaches to teaching specific topics from calculations and conversions to conceptual physics, and ways to encourage active learning (using a portfolio approach, games like Bingo and Jeopardy, substances like Jell-O, and even student-drawn comic strips).

Most of the ideas in the book are applicable across the sciences. Because the tips are only 500 to 700 words each, all contributors have provided contact information so you can learn more by e-mailing them directly.