Building a Transformative Class for Freshman STEM Students to Think and Act Like Creative, Thoughtful Future Scientists

Abstract

Turning a required first-year composition class for STEM students into a transformative college experience is a challenging task. Along with improving fundamental writing skills, encouraging students to think and participate in class discussions, to question sources of information, and to entertain different points of views are just a few of the cognitive skill that need development for scientific work. With the help of the First-year Interest Group (FIG) program, which linked this composition class to the Grand Challenges course, the class was able to provide the students with a common intellectual experience as well as a broader sense of a learning community. In order to quickly engage the students, and encourage them to think like "experts," the composition class first focused on the students' use of social media and games. Introducing the contemporary topics of social media and game-based learning immediately drew students into the course as they monitored their computer use, or played and evaluated different educational games. In class they became the experts as they discussed their findings, and this feeling of ownership continued into the semester as they explored parallel themes that over lapped with the Grand Challenges course. Class discussion flourished because students were required to write a three part structured reaction paper for each assigned reading that included a summary of the author's main points, a discussion of the author's sources and finally their critical reflection on the material. Pre and Post surveys of each student's view of their future role in science and engineering were conducted to determine any change in perception or attitude. Further weekly emails sent by the students were collected to determine their growing awareness and confidence in their understanding of each week's reading and discussion. In response to the reading assignments on media and learning, a few students generated their own digital documentaries of student life. The findings from pre and post class surveys, along with the final anonymous student evaluations, indicated that most students found the class helped them become clearer about their professional goals as well as improve their technical writing skills.