The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology noted in 2012 that “The first two years of college are the most critical to the retention and recruitment of STEM majors.” Researchers and faculty at Michigan State University have responded to this call from PCAST by initiating transformation of the gateway biology, physics, and chemistry courses. The MSU transformation process engages disciplinary faculty in conversations to determine the core ideas of the discipline and how students should be able to use those ideas combined with scientific practices and crosscutting concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems; that is, 3-Dimensional Learning. The emphasis on 3-Dimensional learning means that transformed instructional and assessment practices must be developed, implemented, and evaluated. Our long-term goal is to transform the gateway courses so that students learn to engage with the disciplinary core ideas, scientific practices and crosscutting concepts in the same way that scientists do. We have developed a suite of protocols to assess changes over time in the content, instructional practices, and assessments used in the gateway courses.

Creating a coherent STEM gateway for teaching and learning at Michigan State University: An AAU STEM initiative project

249th National Meeting (2015)

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