Karl Kjer - Science Teaching Resources

Good quality science teaching resources are essential to support teaching science at school, college, or university. Because of the rapidly changing nature of the subject, it is often a challenge for us to keep our teaching up to date. For example, 10 years ago it might have made sense to teach science students how to prepare a glass histology slide for viewing with a microscope. Today, slides are often prepared automatically by large-scale laboratory equipment.

Science and technology subjects
So called STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) are exiting areas of study and graduates possess skills and knowledge sought after by a wide range of employers. So, finding good quality resources to support teaching is essential in order for tutors and lecturers to keep their material up to date. Also, finding good quality scienceteaching resources on the internet can save a tutor time in preparing basic material. There will be thousands of education establishments around the world teaching the anatomy of the heart for example, and so there will be thousands of nearly identical sets of learning materials written by tutors for their students. Surely we could work together to share materials more effectively?

Sharing with open education
Open education is a growing global concept where people are increasingly sharing their science teaching resources. These so called open educational resources (OERs) are existing learning resources that are then published with an open license such as Creative Commons which gives anyone permission to use the material. How amazing is that! There is an abundance of OER on the internet now and the challenge is finding it. In the US, there are organisations such as MIT and repositories such as MERLOT which excel in OER. In the UK, the national repository is JORUM. But the joy of open education is that no matter where you are in the world, you can access OER from other countries.

What to look for in a good resource
For a good quality science teaching resource three things are essential. 1) The item must be up to date. 2) The author must be a credible and authoritative. 3) The resource must be open licensed. Hopefully the OER will be clearly stamped with this information.

What do students like?
Many science teaching resources are used by tutors and lecturers as a supplement to their face-to-face teaching in the classroom or lecture theatre. Students particularly like video and animation, and actually a combination of graphics or images with a voice over makes a very effective teaching aid. The open license should permit you to reuse the resource in lectures or on your course website, and many allow you to adapt and rewrite the resource too.