Overview

Nobel prize winning physicist Carl Wieman describes his efforts to improve science teaching in universities without increasing costs or changing institutional structures.

He outlines challenges facing higher ed, why change needs to happen within the constraints of existing universities (instead of rebuilding from the ground up), lays out his framework for change (Rogers diffusion of innovations), and explains how he set up the Science Education Initiative and its work over 10 years with the University of Colorado and University of British Columbia.

They focused at the department level (that is where undergrad teaching rests), but connected that to university wide efforts to improve undergraduate teaching. He also describes how the initiative was well-funded, took 10 years (in line with org change research), costed 5% of a departments budget, and was supported by dedicated Science Education Specialists. He notes both what worked (teaching in many departments was transformed), but also lingering constraints, especially around incentives (teaching remains an afterthought in higher ed incentive structures).

Areas I disagree with Wieman

Transforming universities is hard work. If we're going to do something hard, we might as well be more ambitious!

(a) Incremental change is much harder than Wieman makes it out to be. Sometimes, its easier to start anew (reimagine) than it is to try and engage in incremental change, especially if there aren't strong incentives (which there aren't). Two pieces in particular:

• What has actually persisted? I'd be curious to follow-up on his work at UC and UBC. What has lingered 5 years since the study ended? What has not? I suspect that the most robust changes haven't persisted.
• What he proposes isn't ambitious enough: Even changes he'd be happy with might improve learning outcomes, but don't create the kind of inclusive and expansive spaces we could see with a more ambitious approach (see this article on Federico Ardilla's math class or any of the core courses we developed at ALU)
• His innovation calculus doesn't add up: he bases his estimates on time (5-10 years) and costs (5% of a department's budget) from change management literature in businesses. However, they key difference is that businesses engage in this change with clear incentives to change. Universities and faculty don't face these incentives as most research universities remain focused on other metrics.
• Why not focus on teaching-first colleges and universities? Instead of focusing on research universities, Wieman could have worked through community colleges where incentives are more clearly tied to teaching. He could have explored why traditional teaching approaches have persisted in community colleges and other teaching first institutions and experimented with ways to move the needle here!

(b) teaching and research aren't different things. As Station1 is showing and as program like MIT's UROP have shown, the most powerful learning in universities happens outside of classes in research labs. Instead of having faculty invest their time in designing better classes, it likely makes more sense to invest in including students in research and other authentic work. To be clear: I'm not romanticizing existing research cultures which are often deeply problematic and exclusive. Rather, I'm arguing that if we invest in reinvention, research offers a powerful site for design. And station1 (Christine Ortiz, Ellen Spero and team) are leading the way here.

(c) Reform is not the only path for change!

As Papert argues in his critique of Tyack and Cuban's Tinkering Toward Utopia, Wieman is too focused on incremental reform. When what we need is to sow the seeds for evolution to a better system. One that can serve the needs of more diverse learners and of a vastly different political economy than the one that our existing higher education system grew out of.

Notes

1. The Vision