Successful Science and Engineering Teaching in Colleges and Universities

This book offers broad, practical strategies for teaching science and engineering courses and describes how faculty can provide a learning environment that helps students comprehend the nature of science, understand science concepts, and solve problems in science courses.

The student-centered approach focuses on two main themes: reflective writing and working in collaborative groups. When faculty incorporate methods into their courses that challenge their students to critically reflect, collaborate, and problem solve, students gain a better understanding of science as a connected structure of concepts rather than as a simple tool kit of assorted practices.

Contents include:

• Reflective writing
• Writing to learn
• Constructing student knowledge
• Selected methods for using collaborative groups
• Changing students’ epistemologies
• Training students to solve problems
• Using technology to aid your teaching

Calvin S. Kalman is a tenured full professor in the Department of Physics, a fellow of the Science College, and a member of the Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance at Concordia University. He is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at McGill University. He has held many positions at Concordia, including chair of the physics department. He has served as chair of the international series of conferences on hyperons, charm and beauty hadrons (Montreal 1997, Genoa 1998, Valencia 200, Vancouver 2002, Chicago 2004, Lancaster UK 2006). He also served as editor-in-chief for the proceedings of these conferences. In addition, he has co chaired and co edited the 26th annual Montreal-Rochester-Syracuse-Toronto (MRST) conference on high energy physics and coauthored the book Preons: Models of Leptons, Quarks and Gauge Bosons as Composite Particles (1992, World Scientific). He held the positions of science editor and senior executive editor of Academic Exchange Quarterly.
The author of 73 published papers related to high energy physics and 34 papers on science educational research, he has also been invited to give papers and workshops on educational research. He presented the keynote address at the annual spring teaching forum, Teaching the Future: Innovation in the College Classroom, at Yale University and at the annual meeting of the physics and engineering physics division of the American Society for Electrical Engineers.
Professor Kalman has served as commissioner for elementary schools and also as commissioner for high schools of the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal. He also served on the council of the Canadian Association of Physicists. He also served on the council of the Canadian Association of Physicists. He was awarded the Canadian Association of Physicists Medal for Excellence in Teaching, the Concordia University Council on Student Life Teaching Award, and a teaching and Creativity Award from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.