Nonscience Majors Research Articles

An introduction to the physics of the clarinet for musicians and other non-science majors

Teaching physics or more generally science related matters to non-science majors requires illustrative comparisons, fascinating application examples, live experiments, multi-medial presentation and simplified representations which can be understood without much background knowledge but which still remain relevant for the taught subject. But first of all, such lectures do require a very dedicated and alert lecturer who is able to captivate his audience by his outstanding presence. Following (some of) these principles a short generally understandable lecture on the acoustics of the clarinet will be given.

Acoustics at Berklee College of Music and elsewhere

Students in the acoustics class at Berklee College of Music were non-science majors, but the course has done well, spanning over 50 semesters, and a number of those students have continued into graduate school and careers in acoustics. This paper will focus on the design and goals of the class, and will also discuss related experiences of teaching non-scientists in seminars, short courses, courses at other colleges, and the ASA-sponsored Continuing Education short course for architects.

Introducing the concept of resonance to non-science majors in a musical acoustics class

Understanding the concept of resonance is one of the most important goals for a student in a musical acoustics course to achieve. In our musical acoustics course students examine the standing wave behavior of simple one-dimensional systems such as stretched strings and pipes with open ends or one closed end. The concept is integral to the discussion of how nearly all musical instrument work, but it is also a difficult concept for many students to understand. In our class, we discuss how looking at the boundary conditions of the systems we examine in class can be applied to predict what the resonant frequencies of the system are.

The Physics of Music course as an introduction to science

Our Physics of Music course is an integration of physics and music. We start with the mathematical structure of music, including scales, harmonies and chords. We discuss musical styles and how they differ. After an introduction of physics concepts, including waves, resonances, forces, energy and fluid flow, the physical structure of instruments in the various groups are studied. Connection is made of the instruments and how they reproduce the mathematical nature of music. Finally, venue acoustics are investigated. The course integrates different styles of learning by integrating different learning modes. The classes include lecture/demonstration, discussion, in-class laboratories and a final individual project encompassing many course elements. The constant connection between the physics and the music, along with varied learning techniques, including hands-on experience, provides a motivating approach for non-science majors to experience science in a familiar context.

The Grapes of Class: Teaching Chemistry Concepts at a Winery

Nonscience majors often believe that the concepts and techniques in chemistry have little relevance to someone outside the “ivy-covered walls of academia”. The challenge for science instructors is to develop and implement lessons that present science in a way that will capture the interest of the nonscience major, while remaining rigorous enough to satisfy the college’s and program’s student-learning outcomes. We have used an activity, a trip to the vineyard, to engage nonscience-major college students in a “laboratory” using scientific instruments in a real-world setting. Students were given a tour of the vineyard and shown the process of wine making. At various points on the tour, each student was guided in the usage of laboratory equipment to determine sugar content, pH, specific gravity, alcohol content, and to perform random sampling. This activity introduced the students to chemistry instrumentation as well as general science concepts.

Putting Students on the Hot Seat to Stimulate Interest in Biology in Non-Science Majors

The Hot Seat is a discussion-based activity that requires students enrolled in a biology course for non-majors to pose a question to the class that is related to the current lecture topic and facilitate a brief class discussion. This paper describes the Hot Seat, how it is assessed, and how it has influenced students’ attitudes toward the course and biology in general. The Hot Seat has been successful in increasing students’ understanding of biology, their appreciation of its relevance to their lives, and in-class participation.

A Method for Teaching Enzyme Kinetics to Nonscience Majors

Enzyme kinetics is an essential part of any proper chemistry education, especially in health care fields such as nursing. Unfortunately, few quality methods for teaching the concepts to nonscience majors have yet been developed. Herein is described the modification of an existing active-learning teaching method with a conceptual basis for teaching enzyme kinetics to nonscience majors. The materials are readily available and the method is both facile and engaging.

Lost in translation: quantifying the overlap of popular media and non-majors science course assessment vocabulary

Earth's climate is rapidly changing, and citizens of the 21st century will need to act based on informed decisions about climate change. A liberal education should contribute to an informed and responsible citizenry who can think independently, reason analytically, and communicate effectively. Following college graduation, typical Americans will gain most of their science information through the media. How well are students prepared to be effective, critical consumers of media-reported science? We broach this subject by comparing the climate change vocabulary of undergraduate science courses for non-science majors with multiple popular media sources. Using PASW Text Analytics for Surveys, we objectively identified key terms from both classroom and media sources, and grouped these terms into major reservoirs and fluxes of the carbon cycle. Our classroom data include exams and quizzes from biology and physical science courses taught at a large, research intensive university. Media reports were collected the week before, after, and during COP15 from daily, weekly, and monthly media sources. Of the 253 items analyzed (183 media responses, 40 assessment responses), we extracted 310 relevant terms and grouped those into 19 categories based on the carbon cycle. The most frequently used terms in assessments included CO2 and reservoirs such as the atmosphere, ocean, tree, and one flux, photosynthesis. Within the media, the most frequently used terms were socio-political in nature (e.g., country, Obama). Between the media and assessments, seven of the top 20 words overlapped and focused primarily on carbon reservoirs. Media and assessments differ substantially in the usage of terms associated with carbon fluxes. Many courses for non-science majors have a goal to improve students' abilities to apply scientifically sound reasoning and knowledge within their everyday lives. Our analysis reveals a discrepancy between the vocabulary used in media sources and in course assessments surrounding the topic of climate change. We suggest non-major science courses should do more to explicitly tie scientific processes to current political, economic, and social discussions. For many students, these courses represent the only science class they will take. The vocabulary they learn today should prepare them to make informed decisions tomorrow.

The Influence of News Frames and Science Background on Attributions About Embryonic and Adult Stem Cell Research

This study investigated effects of frames, science background, and stem cell source on attributions of ethicality, credibility, and usefulness of stem cell research. Framing did not influence perceptions of ethicality, but science majors tended to perceive embryonic research to be more ethical than did nonscience majors. Nonscience majors perceived stem cell research to be less credible than did science majors in an Economic Prospects frame. Science majors perceived embryonic research to be more useful than did nonscience majors except in a Conflict frame. Results suggest that frames cue heuristics that bias science and nonscience majors’ cognitions about stem cell research differently.

Improving Student Attitudes about Learning Science and Student Scientific Reasoning Skills

Student attitudes about learning science and student ideas about the nature of science were compared at the end of two astronomy courses taught in Fall 2007, a course with a traditional astronomy curriculum and a transformed course, whose traditional astronomy curriculum was supplemented by an embedded curriculum that explicitly addressed the nature of science and student metacognition (i.e., thinking about one’s own thinking.) The embedded curriculum in the transformed course gave students practice at evaluating examples of valid science and pseudoscience found on the internet; it also provided students opportunities to discuss what they think about learning science. Student attitudes and ideas were assessed using the epistemological beliefs assessment for physical science (EBAPS) survey, interviews, and written responses to an open-ended exam question. Our results indicate that the embedded curriculum led the majority of students in the transformed course to think that anyone can learn science, whereas a majority of students in the traditional course thought that only individuals with innate abilities can learn science and think scientifically. Students in the transformed course also reported much more confidence in their ability to evaluate the scientific validity of information found on the internet. Furthermore, students from the transformed course valued making sense of science more than students from the traditional course. The embedded curriculum could readily be used in any course for nonscience majors, not just introductory astronomy.

Exploration of factors that affect the comparative effectiveness of physical and virtual manipulatives in an undergraduate laboratory

Recent research results have failed to support the conventionally held belief that students learn physics best from hands-on experiences with physical equipment. Rather, studies have found that students who perform similar experiments with computer simulations perform as well or better on measures of conceptual understanding than their peers who used physical equipment. In this study, we explored how university-level nonscience majors' understanding of the physics concepts related to pulleys was supported by experimentation with real pulleys and a computer simulation of pulleys. We report that when students use one type of manipulative (physical or virtual), the comparison is influenced both by the concept studied and the timing of the post-test. Students performed similarly on questions related to force and mechanical advantage regardless of the type of equipment used. On the other hand, students who used the computer simulation performed better on questions related to work immediately after completing the activities; however, the two groups performed similarly on the work questions on a test given one week later. Additionally, both sequences of experimentation (physical-virtual and virtual-physical) equally supported students' understanding of all of the concepts. These results suggest that both the concept learned and the stability of learning gains should continue to be explored to improve educators' ability to select the best learning experience for a given topic.

The Utility of Writing Assignments in Undergraduate Bioscience

We tested the hypothesis that engagement in a few, brief writing assignments in a nonmajors science course can improve student ability to convey critical thought about science. A sample of three papers written by students (n = 30) was coded for presence and accuracy of elements related to scientific writing. Scores for different aspects of scientific writing were significantly correlated, suggesting that students recognized relationships between components of scientific thought. We found that students' ability to write about science topics and state conclusions based on data improved over the course of three writing assignments, while the abilities to state a hypothesis and draw clear connections between human activities and environmental impacts did not improve. Three writing assignments generated significant change in student ability to write scientifically, although our results suggest that three is an insufficient number to generate complete development of scientific writing skills.

Encouraging Student Participation in Large Astronomy Courses

Introductory astronomy is one of the most widely taught classes in the country1 and the majority of the students who take these classes are non-science majors. Because this demographic of students makes up the majority of astronomy enrollments, it is especially important as instructors that we do our best to make sure these students don't finish this course thinking that they can't do science, that only experts can understand scientific concepts, or that science is just an elaborate belief system. Ideally, at least some classroom time would be spent having the students use skills they already possess to explore concepts about astronomy. Realistically, we understand the time constraints and pressures felt by the average college instructor and the incredible amount of time and energy that can be required to rework a course.

The Chemistry of Perfume: A Laboratory Course for Nonscience Majors

“The Chemistry of Perfume” is a lab-only course for nonscience majors. Students learn fundamental concepts of chemistry through the context of fragrance, a pervasive aspect of daily life. The course consists of laboratories pertaining to five units: introduction, extraction, synthesis, characterization, and application. The introduction unit acquaints students with basic perfume terminology and the idea that chemical structure relates to scent. The extraction unit focuses on capturing and isolating fragrant essences from natural materials, whereas the synthetic unit considers mimicking such scents through chemical reactions. In the characterization unit, students analyze the components of perfume and fragrant materials. The course ends with the application unit in which students incorporate their fragrances into consumer products and toiletries. Curriculum structure, content, and student feedback are described. This perfume lab course results from an effort to increase interest in chemistry among nonscien...

Scientific reasoning abilities of nonscience majors in physics-based courses

We have found that non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors taking either a conceptual physics or astronomy course at two regional comprehensive institutions score significantly lower preinstruction on the Lawson's Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (LCTSR) in comparison to national average STEM majors. Based on LCTSR score, the majority of non-STEM students can be classified as either concrete operational or transitional reasoners in Piaget's theory of cognitive development, whereas in the STEM population formal operational reasoners are far more prevalent. In particular, non-STEM students demonstrate significant difficulty with proportional and hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Prescores on the LCTSR are correlated with normalized learning gains on various concept inventories. The correlation is strongest for content that can be categorized as mostly theoretical, meaning a lack of directly observable exemplars, and weakest for content categorized as mostly descriptive, where directly observable exemplars are abundant. Although the implementation of research-verified, interactive engagement pedagogy can lead to gains in content knowledge, significant gains in theoretical content (such as force and energy) are more difficult with non-STEM students. We also observe no significant gains on the LCTSR without explicit instruction in scientific reasoning patterns. These results further demonstrate that differences in student populations are important when comparing normalized gains on concept inventories, and the achievement of significant gains in scientific reasoning requires a reevaluation of the traditional approach to physics for non-STEM students.

Discovery Garden — Physics and Architecture Meet Outside to Talk

The purpose of Georgian Court University's “Discovery Garden” is to create an experience of the physical sciences for students, both science and non-science majors, in a place of serenity: an outdoor garden. Why a garden? Consider that the traditional laboratory experience for students is one of stark rooms ventilated with noisy hoods and endemic with lab coats and safety glasses, an alien environment that can be a source of anxiety for some students studying science, while the idea of a garden excites the imagination and conjures peace. The garden also serves as a reminder that ideas learned in the classroom apply to the everyday world. In addition, the garden is a model of informal learning, which can be especially interesting for pre-service teachers. Outlined here are some general suggestions for the design of a science garden, applicability of educational philosophy to full-body experiences, and activities suggested for students and future teachers in such a garden, as well as a mini-tour of our garden.

Teaching Science and Ethics to Undergraduates: A Multidisciplinary Approach

The teaching of the ethical implications of scientific advances in science courses for undergraduates has significant advantages for both science and non-science majors. The article describes three courses taught by the author as examples of the concept, and examines the disadvantages as well as the advantages. A significant advantage of this approach is that many students take the courses primarily because of the ethical component who would not otherwise take science. A disadvantage is less time in the course for the science; arguably, this is outweighed by the greater retention of the science when it is put into context.

Models and Strategies for Teaching Evolution to Non-Science Majors in a Seminar Format

A cornerstone of paleontological education is the topic of evolution. While formal evolutionary biology classes made up of lectures and labs are essential for students of biology and paleontology, these classes are closed to most non-science majors because they often require multiple prerequisites. Because of a combination of anti-evolution cultural forces and shortcomings in evolution-based education at the K-12 level, many American college students have not received accurate or effective evolution instruction before entering college. Because a working knowledge of evolution is essential for developing biological scientific literacy, some colleges and universities now offer seminar-style evolution courses designed for non-science majors that can help reverse this trend. Seminars such as these offer students the added opportunity to develop more sophisticated writing, speaking, and critical-thinking skills in the context of evolutionary biology. This chapter highlights two successful course models and two shorter course modules, provides lists of teaching resources, and details a number of different writing and discussion-based pedagogical strategies as they apply to teaching evolution in a seminar setting.

Strategies for Teaching Evolution in a High-Enrollment Introductory Paleontology Course for Non-Science Majors

The high-enrollment introductory paleontology course, “Prehistoric Life,” taught at the University of North Carolina Wilmington fulfills general-education life-science credit. Most students enter the course with little knowledge of evolution (90% are non-science majors). Some assume evolution and religion are incompatible, and as non-science students, they have little incentive to learn about topics perceived to threaten their faith. Nevertheless, such students need to be prepared to make informed decisions on public-policy issues related to teaching evolution. Five principal strategies have been effective in teaching evolution to such students: 1) creating a student-centered classroom in which active/ collaborative learning engages student interest and prevents them from tuning out a threatening topic; 2) building a foundation for evolution by fostering understanding of the fossil record and geologic time; 3) in discussing evolution, focusing not only on the evidence for and mechanisms of evolution, but also clarifying the nature of science and differentiating it from religion, reinforcing that science and religion need not conflict; 4) giving students the opportunity to respond in writing to one of the position statements on evolution available from professional societies; this approach helps students formulate their own views, reassures them that their religious beliefs are respected, and fends off potential hostility during class; and 5) cultivating evolutionary thinking throughout the course (e.g., discuss evidence for evolutionary transitions and role of natural selection in evolution of various groups). These strategies have been successful in fostering student learning about evolution as indicated by teaching evaluations, student attendance, and comments in student reflection papers on evolution.

Membranes, Ions, and Signals: An Integrated, Multimedia, Biophysics Module for First-Year Medical Students

First-year medical students, unlike typical graduate students, include many non-science majors with varying prior exposure to mathematics or physical sciences. To provide a common substrate for medical education that acknowledged these disparate backgrounds, an introductory Molecules to Cells course was designed in 1996 by D.G., O.S.A., and colleagues. Now Molecules, Genes, and Cells (MGC), this spans protein structure, lipids, cellular genetics, metabolic biochemistry, cell division, and more. We now report design and implementation of a Membranes, Ions, and Signals (MIS) module for MGC, covering cellular biophysics, physiology, and pharmacology. Building on membrane lipid structure and function, MIS incorporates: • plasma membrane and compartments • properties of those compartments important to electrochemistry, signaling, and biophysics, • structure and function of membrane channels, transporters and receptors • electrophysiology of excitable tissue • signals and information: synaptic, cellular, cytoplasmic, and nuclear • signals in disease contexts • signals into actions: structure and function of skeletal and smooth muscle This material is both essential and conceptually difficult, and MIS is designed to offer students an optimal sequence, schedule, and presentation forms and formats to aid understanding. As an integrated module, MIS relates these topics and makes them relevant to contemporary work and translational promise. Staffing is interdepartmental, via Physiology & Biophysics, Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Cardiology. MD-PhD students take the course and module in their first year, then participate as journal club instructors. A signals-and-channels computer lab incorporates material from Richardson and Richardson (1992), Brandon and Tooze (1999), and R. Bookman (U.Miami) for in-class instruction utilizing 40 workstations for ∼100 students. Introduced in Fall, 2010, student evaluation of the material and integration was highly positive; currently (Fall 2011) textual and graphic material is being delivered to students via iPad.