A Core Course in Scientific Inquiry

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The science literacy of college graduates is not acceptable for today's technological society. To hold jobs and to be responsible, voting citizens, non-science graduates need fewer facts from specific science disciplines and more skills with which to understand, approach, and reason about science issues. This project will develop a science course designed to instill an awareness of how science is practiced and the skills needed to approach science issues with responsible confidence. While addressing a national need for increased science literacy, it will also fulfill the science requirement in the core curriculum. The primary audience for this new course will be students in the liberal arts, education, and the social sciences. The project will reach its desired goal by designing a course in which students carry out hands-on science activities in a controlled discovery environment. Students will not be given the content details in a formal lecture setting. Rather they will be given activities that bring out important variables in observed phenomena, instead of in theories. The course and its development will be guided by four objectives: to train students in the process of observation, to assist students in developing explanations for what they observe, to assist students to create models which will test their explanations, and to lead to students to apply their explanations to other examples. At the conclusion of this project a complete, stand alone one semester course in scientific inquiry will be packaged. There will be a full series of student activities that can be conducted in an 80 minute class period with preparatory material, further explanations for students and resource material for teachers.