Relevant Issues that Challenge the Designing of Transformative, Liberating Online Science Courses

Abstract

Science as a discipline has gone through many paradigm shifts, both in terms of scientific knowledge and science pedagogy. One recent trend is the movement of science courses into an online environment. While this shift started as supplemental instruction, a movement in education is to offer entire science courses, normally taught in a face-to-face format, online. Moving science instruction into this type of environment illuminates many challenges in science education to a different and critical level. These challenges include issues in equity, accountability, identity formation, and appropriate pedagogical practices. The authors explore these challenges in general for online learning and specifically for teaching science online. It is clear that these issues, while heavily researched in face-to-face science instruction, have not been seriously considered in the online format. Currently it appears that those teaching science online have simply ported their face-to-face course without considering the fact that instruction needs to be changed when teaching online.