Promoting STEM-literacy by Designing Decision-Driven Interdisciplinary Courses for Non-Science Majors

Abstract

Methods traditionally used to teach and train in STEM fields are being used to educate for careers in homeland security, Wall Street investments, and financial planning. An example of this trend is the increasing number of courses offered at institutions of higher education, such as financial engineering, computational finance, and risk analytics. These jobs draw heavily on STEM knowledge and skills, and represent some of the most rapidly growing or wealth producing sectors of the U.S. economy.  To better prepare  non-STEM majors entering these fields, we developed an interdisciplinary science course for non-science majors with the goals of reducing the negative perceptions and attitudes towards the science general education curriculum. This interdisciplinary course also created a venue to teach non-science majors how to deal with real world STEM issues.  By engaging students in activities which promoted skills critical in STEM fields, we designed a course that integrated a sampling of content in physical and life sciences, while at the same time increasing scientific curiosity and literacy. This new course, STEM 1200-Scientific Decisions in Everyday Life was taught employing active engagement techniques and student-centered demonstrations to increase conceptual understanding of scientific concepts. Results of a Wilcoxon Signed Rants test on a pre- and post-course assessment question showed a significant gain in students’ confidence in their conceptual understanding as a result of the engaging demonstrations.