UI Shoots For Stars In Science Joins Nasa’s Project Nova To Improve Teacher Studies

The University of Idaho is launching a special effort to make math, science and engineering exciting for students.

The school has joined NASA’s Project Nova, a program designed to enhance scientific literacy in college students studying to become teachers. The university is part of the Project Nova consortium, along with the University of Alabama and Fayetteville State University, and during the week hosted one of the program’s quarterly workshops.

Project Nova’s major goal is to teach potential science and math teachers how to make their subjects exciting to students. By encouraging universities to revamp education students’ courses into a more interactive, less lecture-heavy format, the program hopes the students will continue the trend when they become teachers.

“Nova provides ideas, training and some money to universities to create innovative courses, or series of courses, on their campus,” said Dennis Sunal, a professor of teacher education at the University of Alabama and a team leader for the project. “We want to change the way courses are taught.”

Workshops generally consist of about 10 interdisciplinary teams of faculty members from different universities. The teams, including faculty from two or more colleges and often someone from the university’s administration, must apply to attend.

Once a university team has successfully completed a workshop, it’s eligible to apply for a $30,000 NASA grant to develop and implement improved courses. So far, 18 colleges and universities have received NASA grants, and more than 65 have participated in workshops. More than 150 faculty members and university officials have attended.

When Idaho applied to become part of Project Nova, it offered three courses it would like to improve. One was introductory astronomy, a class required for secondary education majors with a minor in either physics or earth science.

Traditionally, it has been a lecture class. The university proposed complete restructuring to make it more student-friendly by reducing the class from about 80 percent lectures to less than 20 percent. Idaho also added interactive group activities, extended the use of technology like the Internet to facilitate research and did collaborative work with similar courses at other schools.