International Journal of
Information and Education Technology

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.