npj Science of Learning Community: Digest #15

This month, npj Science of Learning authors demonstrated how an education program is motivating students to study science; and described what a large replicated randomized controlled trial tells us about teaching evolution.

An activity-based teaching program is inspiring more high school students to pursue a career in STEM. Students are immersed into activities with outcome-oriented design and experimental planning using the scientific method. Learn more about the success of the program in Discovery with researchers Dawn Kilkenny, Neal Callaghan and Locke Davenport Huyer.

Instructing students about the evolution of species has always centred on the human perspective, so Laurence Hurst and his lab group decided to test current teaching strategies through a series of replicated controlled trials in a real school scenario. The research data revealed some surprising insights about the success and failure of lesson design and resulted in the development of new teaching resources, most notably a new MOOC. Read more in Evolution in teaching.