The Pursuit of Excellence: Transforming Undergraduate Science Education through Evidence-Based Practice

西弗吉尼亚州本科生科学教育夏季学院(WVUSI)是一个为期4天的专业发展研讨会，面向西弗吉尼亚州4年制院校的科学和数学教师、博士后研究员和研究生。就像成功的国家科学院本科生生物学教育暑期研究所(NASI)一样，该研究所举办上午研讨会，模拟主动学习、评估和多样性，下午举行小组工作会议，参与者使用他们在上午研讨会中练习的策略创建教材。作为周末的总结性评估，小组向整个学院展示他们的教材。这些小组对他们的教材进行有价值的同行评估，然后在他们返回机构时将这些材料落实到他们的一个班级中。然而，与只选择生物教师团队的NASI不同，这个项目的目标是科学和数学团队，也包括博士后研究员和研究生。2008年5月在西弗吉尼亚大学试行这个研究所已经增加了科学和数学领域的教职员工和研究生的数量，这些教师和研究生正在改变他们的教学方式，并自愿为这个研究所提供帮助。

The West Virginia Summer Institute on Undergraduate Science Education (WVUSI) is a 4-day professional development workshop on scientific teaching for science and math faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students in 4-year institutions in the state of West Virginia. Just like the successful National Academies Summer Institute on Undergraduate Biology Education (NASI), this institute holds morning workshops that model active learning, assessment and diversity, with afternoon group work sessions where participants create teaching materials using the strategies that they practiced in the morning workshop. As a summative assessment at the end of the week, the groups present their teaching materials to the entire institute. The groups receive valuable peer evaluation on their teaching materials which they incorporate before implementing the materials into one of their classes when they return to their institutions. However unlike NASI, which only selects biology faculty teams, this project targets science and math teams and also post-doctoral fellows and graduate student. Piloting this institute in May 2008 at West Virginia University has already increased the number of faculty and graduate students across the sciences and in math that are changing the way they teach, and also volunteering to help with this institute.