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Supplementary material for Carl Wieman, “Expertise in University Teaching & the Implications for Teaching Effectiveness, Evaluation & Training,” Daedalus 146 (4) (Fall 2019).

The Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at the University of British Columbia and its smaller partner at the University of Colorado Boulder were large-scale finite-duration experiments (approximately $10 million and $5 million, respectively) in institutional change. They showed that it is possible for large research-intensive university science departments to make major changes in their teaching, and they revealed the processes that help and hinder such change. An extensive discussion of this experiment is given in Carl Wieman, Improving How Universities Teach Science (2017).

At the University of British Columbia, the Initiative changed the teaching of about 170 science faculty members and courses, with the fraction of transformed faculty and credit hours reaching 90 percent in some departments. These faculty are finding teaching to be more rewarding, and their students are far more engaged and learning more. Teaching became much more of a collaborative intellectual activity in these departments, with faculty sharing methods and results and seeking out ideas from others. The transformed teaching is characterized by: detailed learning goals for the course that express what students should learn to do in operational terms; in-class active-learning activities such as peer instruction, think-pair-share, and worksheets that have students practicing expert thinking by answering questions in small groups monitored by the instructor and TAs and interspersed with regular instructor feedback and guidance; different forms of assessment aligned with course goals, such as graded homework, more-frequent lower-stakes exams, and two-stage exams that students complete individually and then as a group; reflective exercises such as two-minute papers at the end of a class; and brief preclass preparations such as targeted readings.

Such results were not easy nor shared across all departments. The three most important elements were: supporting department-level change, incentives, and maximizing faculty buy-in.

Supporting department-level change. At universities, each department decides what and how to teach, and so the department is the unit of educational change. The CWSEI used a competitive grant program by which departments competed for up to $1.8 million over six years to transform teaching. Potential grants of this scale produced discussions of undergraduate teaching needs and opportunities that had never happened before. The success of the funded departments was strongly influenced by disciplinary culture and the quality of the departmental leadership and administration, which varied greatly. New structures and people, such as a teaching initiatives committee with responsibility and resources, were required, as the traditional departmental structures, when left unchanged, were never effective at supporting innovation.

A key component in every successful department were science education specialists (SESs) with deep expertise in the respective discipline combined with expertise in teaching and learning in the discipline. The SESs were hired by the department and worked collaboratively with a sequence of faculty to transform courses and, in the process, the teaching of the faculty. The SESs act as nonthreatening coaches, providing expert guidance and support to faculty members as they try new things in their courses. With SES guidance, a faculty member was likely to implement research-based teaching methods in an effective manner from the beginning, and hence have a positive teaching experience. The SESs also provide expert and time-saving assistance in developing new course materials and assessments. It was usually easy to find good SES candidates with the necessary disciplinary knowledge and interest in education, typically new Ph.D.s, but it was necessary to set up an extensive training program for them in the relevant research and best research-based teaching methods.

Incentives. Incentives need to be provided for both the departments and the individual faculty members to take the time to learn new teaching methods. The formal incentive system is a powerful disincentive to improving teaching. At all universities, the evaluation system does not recognize that research has shown there are fundamental differences in the effectiveness of different teaching methods, and hence the system penalizes any time away from research to learn better methods. The CWSEI showed that it does not cost more money or time to teach using these more effective methods, but it does cost money to bring about change. One incentive is having the dean and department chair clearly convey that better teaching is an important institutional goal, but most other incentives involve money in one form or another, largely to minimize and compensate for the time required to learn.

Maximizing faculty buy-in. Instead of starting with specific courses to transform, it was more effective to start with any willing faculty members and accommodate them according to what courses and process of change work best for them. Some faculty were happy to carry out a total course transformation all at once, but for many others, an incremental approach worked better, from both psychological and logistical perspectives. Even modest changes usually showed positive results. Almost immediately the use of active learning methods gave faculty a better understanding of their students’ thinking, and hence how to make their teaching more effective. There are many fears associated with making change. The most effective ways to address these fears were not by providing data, but rather by having faculty talk to their colleagues who had transformed their teaching and watch the teaching of a good transformed course in their department. For many faculty members, it can take one or two years of hearing about these ideas and discussing them with their colleagues before they decide to change, with no obvious large differences between young and older faculty members.

The CWSEI has published a large body of resources on its website. These include peer-reviewed research papers on various aspects of teaching and learning and extensive guidance for instructors. The following links also feature a variety of guides on details of design and implementation of research-based instruction and videos showing demonstrations.

For a collection of documents offering detailed advice for departments and faculty members on how to redesign courses, see “.”

For a collection of short guides for instructors (on assessment, clicker use, student engagement, and so on) that illustrates in concrete terms the pedagogical philosophy (active engagement of students) underlying these initiatives, see “.” The advice is highly practical.

For a collection of videos that show, among other things, what active learning looks like, see “.”

For an annotated bibliography of papers on the research behind many aspects of active learning, see “.”