Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
ASEE Annual Conference, San-Antonio, Kuzey Mariana Adaları, 10 - 13 Haziran 2012
A certain level of scientific knowledge is needed for non-engineering and non-science majors because their success often demands effective use of and making informed decisions about scientific issues. This paper focuses on developing a strategy for providing non-science majors with a basic level of scientific knowledge for successfully dealing with real world technological issues. "The Environment" course was taught in Fall 2007 to non-science majors as a science core requirement using the traditional lecture method. This was the control group. An experimental group was taught in spring 2010 using four indices: (1) learning from three Hands On and Minds On labs, (2) using Closer Looks, (3) case studies, and (4) development of critical thinking abilities. The method of selecting these indices is explained in the paper. The average grade of the control group was 64% and that of the experimental group was 77%, a 20% improvement over the control group. The groups were significantly different with a calculated t value of 2.6. The t-test confirmed statistical improvement at significant confidence level with an alpha value of 0.05. The students ranked learning from three Hands On and Minds On labs.