Professional Development

Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) and project partners are developing an online course for high school science teachers. The purpose of the course is to help teachers understand key energy concepts in alternative energy contexts. The course includes three interactive learning experiences (interactives) that use life cycle data from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

Research has shown that curriculum-based professional development for teachers is a key component in the effective implementation of innovative, researched-based science curricula. Scaling up to a broad-based national market, however, is logistically constrained and limited by the traditional face-to-face professional development model. A key factor in a districts’ decision-making process affecting the adoption of a research-based curricula is their ability to provide the necessary on-going and timely professional development.

The three panelists in this session are in the last one or two years of their game-based learning projects, and all have done extensive work in supporting use of their games in classroom learning. As their work has progressed, each has discovered valuable ways to support teachers as well as encountered surprises in what teachers wanted (and didn’t want), and now recognize things they wished they had learned in the beginning of their projects. Session participants leave with recommendations they can use in their current projects, including:

The collective work represented in this session responds to reports that the United States’ competitive advantage lies in its role as a technological innovation leader and to proposals that individual interest in innovation should be fostered early to avoid stereotypes and other impediments to entering the innovation pipeline.