The UCLA Science Challenge

加州大学洛杉矶分校物理科学专业的学生20年来一直在单调地死去。加州大学洛杉矶分校科学挑战赛接受了四个目标：1)保留现有的科学专业，2)招收新的科学专业，3)吸引少数族裔学生学习科学，4)改善学生对科学的态度。加州大学洛杉矶分校的学生群体异乎寻常地多样化，他们是从排名前12.5%的加州高中毕业生中挑选出来的。每个学生都有资格进入理科专业学习。加州大学洛杉矶分校科学挑战赛、天文学、大气科学、化学和生物化学、地球和空间科学、数学和物理学六个系去年为大约6000名本科生教授了低级课程。这些学生中超过20%是黑人或西班牙裔。我们有学生联系人；我们有一个很棒的机会。我们专注于较低级别的课程和实验室，并对方法进行了试验。我们发现，互动的、基于计算机的材料提供了最有效和最受欢迎的实验室教学。让学生在计算机终端上进行的互动研讨会和讨论会议在教学中被证明是非常有效的。加州大学洛杉矶分校创建的计算密集型演示程序在讲座中引起了兴奋。我们现在正在将这些演示程序转换为交互式学生程序。利用这些经验，我们利用交互式程序模块开发并实施了天文学、大气科学和化学三门新的原型课程。学生们的反应超出了我们的最大希望。认知心理学评估我们的教学效果，评估学生的态度。我们现在正在对我们的低级科学进行彻底改革，创建了11门新课程和18个新的跨学科实验室模块。

Physical science majors at UCLA have deceased monotonically for 20 years. The UCLA Science Challenge has accepted as its mission four goals: 1) retain current science majors, 2) recruit new science majors, 3) attract minority students to science, and 4) improve student attitudes toward science. UCLA serves an unusually diverse student body chosen from the top 12.5% of California high school graduates. Every student enters qualified to major in science. The six departments that comprise the UCLA Science Challenge, Astronomy, Atmospheric Science, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Earth and Space Science, Mathematics, and Physics, taught approximately 6000 undergraduate students in lower-division courses last year. More than 20% of these students are Black or Hispanic. We have the student contact; we have an awesome opportunity. We have focused on lower-division courses and laboratories, and we have experimented with methods. We find that interactive, computer- based materials provide the most effective and the most popular laboratory instruction. Interactive seminars and discussion sessions, which have students at a computer terminal, have proved exceptionally effective in teaching. Computationally intensive demonstration programs created at UCLA have generated excitement in lectures. We are now converting these demonstration programs to interactive student programs. Using these experiences, we developed and implemented three new prototype courses in Astronomy, Atmospheric Science, and Chemistry using interactive program modules. Student response exceeded our wildest hopes. Cognitive Psychology evaluates our teaching effectiveness and assesses student attitudes. We now are now radically overhauling our lower-division science based on the creation of 11 new courses and 18 new interdisciplinary laboratory modules.