Texas A&M Professor Proposes “Authentic” Science Teaching and Online Community
Katherine Friedrich

When Bob Mathieu promoted CIRTL’s mission on a visit to Texas A&M University, Bruce Herbert had a “Eureka!” moment. “I listened to Bob five seconds and it was like, ‘This is what we can do,’” said Herbert, a professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics.

Together with Bob Webb, a professor of physics and associate dean at TAMU, Herbert has proposed using CIRTL’s instructional materials development and internship courses to prepare graduate students to introduce inquiry-based learning into science classrooms.

Inquiry-based learning is part of a major initiative currently going on at TAMU. In inquiry-based courses, Herbert explained, “students… experience science and math through activities that are authentic.” Students see the complex, less-constrained problems that scientists do. 

Herbert said that TAMU’s experience in inquiry-based learning will be useful for other universities participating in CIRTL. To this expertise, he adds his own interest in developing web-based learning communities. Together with Kitch Barnicle, CIRTL’s Network Coordinator, Herbert plans to develop a web community for the CIRTL Network. 

“On any given campus,” Herbert said, “It’s only a small percentage who are willing to be the pioneers.” To support these professors and future faculty as teachers and make their participation in CIRTL valuable, Herbert said, an online community is essential. Making CIRTL’s collective knowledge available on the Web, Herbert said, “will take advantage of the diversity of expertise and the numbers of people.”    

Seeking inspiration for the site, Herbert looked to popular web destinations such as Netflix, Myspace, and Amazon. These sites provide personalized content, interest-based recommendations, and, in some cases, profiles and blogs. Since these sites serve large populations, they also make it easy for people to connect with small groups that share their interests.

Herbert sees the site as key to CIRTL’s success, since it will allow a community of practice to form across geographically dispersed institutions. By integrating an online learning system such as Moodle with podcasts, collaborative work spaces, blogs, online portfolios and conferencing, Herbert hopes to make it easy for people to learn from their colleagues throughout the Network.

In designing the site, convenience, useful content and ease of navigation will be crucial. Faculty and future faculty at major universities are intensely busy. “Most of our life is fighting fires,” Herbert said.  But, Herbert emphasized, building a solid online community among this group of institutionally diverse “pioneers” is the way to a highly successful Network. 

May 17, 2007
  

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