Abstract—A variety of teaching strategies for undergraduate
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
educationhave been studied over the years. Most of them are
centered at active/collaborative pedagogy. However, most
research is focused on introductory, topic courses and very little
is targeted at more advanced, calculus based core courses for
STEM majors. Even fewer papers provided detailed and
sufficient classroom implementation of these strategies. This
paper is to fill the gap and provide example strategies and
sample assignments for two distinct courses, an introductory
science course and an advanced STEM program core course.
These strategies shift from traditional lecture-based teaching
methods to activity-based methods. According to the Learning
Pyramid of the National Training Laboratories of the United
States, this shift can increase the average student retention rate
from the 10%-30% levels to the 80-90% levels.The results on
retention rates in this study are consistent with the Learning
Pyramid thesis.
Index Terms—STEM, undergraduate, education, activities.
Xin Gao is with the Natural Sciences Department, LaGuardia Community
College of The City University of New York (CUNY), Long Island City, NY
11101 USA (e-mail: xgao@lagcc.cuny.edu).
Brian Schwartz is with the Physics Department, Brooklyn College of The
City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY 11210 USA (e-mail:
Bschwartz@gc.cuny.edu).
Cite: Xin Gao and Brian Schwartz, "Classroom Implementation of Active Instructional Strategies for Undergraduate STEM Education," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 5, no. 9, pp. 688-692, 2015.