Rethinking STEM Education at Stanford
From Richard Larson
Our BLOSSOMS Twitter page focuses on news, research and editorials about STEM education. We urge you to take a look. Go to the BLOSSOMS web site http://blossoms.mit.edu and click on the Twitter icon. One item that caught our eye recently was an editorial in the newspaper of Stanford University: Rethinking STEM Education at Stanford. http://bit.ly/y2pdQb But the theme—we believe—applies to STEM education at MIT, Harvard and at high schools. The basic idea is that students drop out of STEM classes in both high school and at the university level—especially in introductory classes—because they are “too hard.” But the Stanford research has shown that the introductory computer science class is seen as one of the hardest introductory classes around, and yet it acts like a magnet, drawing in more and more students.

Yet other more traditional problem-set type courses cause students to drop out of STEM tracks. So what is the difference? The Stanford researchers have found that students like the computer science class because it is learning by doing, or "inductive learning.” The students like the “the trial and error in designing a computer program to complete a certain task; over time, the student learns which approaches work and utilizes these effective practices when confronted with similar problems in the future.” With this method, students tend to remember what they have learned. But most courses at the university level are taught via deductive learning: …deduction, starting with ‘fundamentals’ and proceeding to applications.” These are the classes that students tend to drop. There is too little space here to go into more detail, but please read the Editorial and – if you are really interested – the downloadable pdf research report (many years old now) accompanying it.

Richard Larson is the Mitsui Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. He is also the Director of MIT LINC and the Principle Investigator of MIT BLOSSOMS.

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