HEWLETT GRANT PROPOSAL
HISTORY OF SCIENCE - A CROSS CULTURAL APPROACH
Web obects test site: <http://www.geocities.com/hmmwv19/history/>
PLEASE NOTE: Because there are many electronic links in the following materials, the final draft of this proposal is available in both hard-copy and electronic versions. The e-version is found at: <http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/faculty/hewlett.html>
The following proposal is organized into four parts:
A. The need for and description of the project.
B. The application of the project to the grant's Major Criteria.
C. The application of the project to the grant's Minor Criteria.
A. NEED FOR AND DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT: (return to index)
1. There is a need at Pacific University for the cross-cultural history of science course we are proposing. Pacific is distinctive because it combines a liberal arts college with health science professional schools. A large proportion of the students who choose Pacific do so because of an interest in the sciences, even though many ultimately graduate into careers in non-science related and non-health related fields. At times there has been a perception of factionalism within the Pacific community that suggests a divide among the professional schools, the undergraduate sciences, and the undergraduate liberal arts. The course we are proposing would draw on and integrate the strengths of faculty and tap the interest of students in the arts, the sciences, and the health-care programs. It also proposes what we believe is a useful model for future cooperation between the various units of the university and community. It will give faculty and students across the University a chance to focus on what we share in common, that being a need to understand the role of science in human culture. Additionally, the model presented here will give many faculty and staff the opportunity to build the skills and gain the experience which will permit them eventually to develop courses for distance delivery.
2. The second need which both Occupational Therapy (OT) and Physical Therapy (PT) faculty have communicated to us is that the students in the health science programs require a broader cultural approach to science than is currently included in their curriculum. The OT program currently incorporates a perspective of cultural relativity, but the PT program does not but wishes to do so. Dr. Banaitis commented that the Pacific PT students are technically well trained but lack a meaningful grasp of the cultural dimension involved in working with people with different perspectives than their own. We propose to augment the History of Science course currently being taught irregularly in the College of Arts and Sciences with a course which will be taught by a consortium of professors drawn from the undergraduate college and the University professional schools. The course is cross-cultural in that it will look at science as it developed in a variety of cultural contexts, including Asian sciences, Islamic sciences, medieval European sciences, science as it began to emerge in the sixteenth century (the "Scientific Revolution"), and science from a contemporary perspective. In short, the course will take a cross-cultural approach to the development of sciences with an emphasis on science as one element of culture. It will treat science as a problem in intellectual history.
3. The course will be modular in that there will be seven units, each of which can be used on its own or integrated with other units. Those seven units are: optics, biology, health care, cosmology/physics, chemistry, technology, and math/measurement. The seven units together will be offered as a regular, seamless course in the undergraduate College of Arts and Sciences. This course will have appeal to students in both the undergraduate sciences and arts. In addition, students from the professional schools will participate in selected modules which apply to their field. For instance, The School of Occupational Therapy has committed to enroll the first year OT students in our units on health care and cosmology. The School of Optometry has committed to enroll students in the unit on optics, and to utilize materials developed for this course in their own History of Optometry course, now being contemplated. The School of Education is interested in a version of the course being delivered to its program in Eugene in the future. The School of Physical Therapy has also agreed to have their first year students take relevant units of the course. Those units would be incorporated into the current PT curriculum during the second semester of the first year.
4. Each of the modules or units will last approximately two weeks and will include the following pedagogical approaches:
1. Presentation of material through lecture, films, discussions, and readings.
a. Jeffrey Barlow will focus on Asian scientific perspectives in each of the seven units and oversee computer applications.
b. Martha Rampton will focus on the medieval and Islamic perspectives in each of the seven units.
c. Dave Boersema will focus on Western scientific perspectives of the Scientific Revolution in each of the seven units.
2. The contemporary perspective on the science covered in a given unit will be presented by associate members of the teaching consortium whose participation, though limited, is integral to the course. These associate members will provide readings and lecture or lead a discussion during one class period.
a. Kevin Johnson (Chemistry Dept.) will present perspectives on modern Chemistry.
b. Mary Fehrs (Physics Dept.) will present perspectives on modern Physics.
c. Richard Wiener (Physics Dept.) will present perspectives on modern Mathematics
d. Steve Cool (OT) and Dr. Guo-hui Liu from Portland's School of Oriental Medicine will present perspectives on modern Health Care
e. Dr. Karl Citek (School of Optometry) will present perspectives on the development of optics in both the Western and Indian scientific traditions.
f. A member of the OMSI outreach program will present perspectives on modern technology
g. Pam Lopez (Biology Dept.) will present perspectives on modern Biology.
3. With some of the units the students will travel to sites to get a sense of how the science of that particular unit is practiced in their own community. Some of the sites we have identified are the Pacific Eye Clinic, the Nuclear Reactor at Reed College, The School of Oriental Medicine, and OMSI. The purpose of the site visits is to give the students an opportunity to experience and understand aspects of the material presented in the class-centered portions of the course and to foster an active intellectual relationship between the Pacific students and their local community around topics of mutual interest, in this case, the role of science in twentieth century American culture.
4. One aspect of the active learning component of the course centers around the student creation of computer-based learning objects. By this we mean that for each unit the students will build in an electronic environment models by which they can come to better understand concepts presented in class. For instance, in the unit on cosmology, a student may construct a model of the Ptolemaic universe of crystalline spheres and contrast this with Chinese visions of the universe as constructed by other students. For another example, students will be able to utilize Chinese approaches as well as early western approaches to measure land area within an electronic environment.
These models or learning objects are interactive; when certain variables are changed, the model conforms to the new assumptions. Because we know that these learning objects are difficult to understand, we have created a web page with links to existing learning objects. These particular objects have been created for other purposes, but a glance at these examples will serve to clarify the concept of learning objects. For a demo see: <http://mcel.pacificu.edu/webobjectsDemo/>
5. The students will be evaluated at the end of each unit through a variety of means including tests, essays, and evaluation of their work with their learning objects. The success of the course itself will in part be assessed by the participating faculty from the off-campus sites who will be asked to evaluate both the syllabus and the on-line aspects of the course.
6. In addition to evaluation at the end of each unit, the students enrolled in the semester-long course will be expected to complete a research project on one of the topics from the course which both will allows them to actively engage the material presented in class and will promote civic responsibility. The students will prepare an oral presentation and develop a related electronic site. They will also be expected to present their findings and demonstrate their model in a public forum of their choosing in which they feel dissemination of the material provides a valuable service. For instance, students may give their presentations at OMSI, at the School of Oriental Medicine, at local Forest Grove high schools, at retirement homes, at the Spanish Cultural Center in Cornelius, or for a Pacific audience, to give just a few possibilities.
7. Students and faculty, working together, will place as much of the course as is possible into electronic environments. These environments will be web-based and will include web pages, searchable bulletin boards, and real-time graphical discussion environments. These will include all lecture materials, substantial readings, links to a wide variety of related sites, and the learning objects themselves, as well as searchable files of class discussions held on-line. It is our goal to develop approaches that will permit about one-third of the course to be delivered electronically both in real time (synchronously) and at times of the students' choosing (asynchronously). Once the course has been presented initially, it will be possible to deliver entire modules of the course at a distance in subsequent iterations of the course.
These electronic modules will be made available to the professional schools on campus, to OMSI, to the Oriental School of Medicine, to name several organizations which have already agreed to cooperate. It is also our belief that once we can have elements of the course available, other institutions will also wish to cooperate, particularly area secondary schools. The Pacific Extension School of Education in Eugene has indicated that it would like to utilize this approach in teaching a version of this course. In this later iteration, much of the course will be delivered electronically and a member of the Pacific staff (Barlow, Rampton or Boersema), or faculty from the professional schools, will lead discussions, or lecture on-site in Eugene. This meets a need of the Eugene site for a cross-cultural course to help train teachers and teachers' aides in the K-12 science curriculums.
B. APPLICATION OF THE PROPOSAL TO THE GRANT'S MAJOR CRITERIA (return to index)
1. COLLABORATION: The proposal is collaborative in the following ways:
a. The course is taught by a consortium of teachers from a variety of disciplines and fields. The proposal brings together in the planning and execution of the course professors from the arts and sciences of the undergraduate college and professors from several programs of the graduate schools on campus. The associate members of the consortium will be involved in the classroom, as explained above, in helping students make decisions about venues for the presentation of final projects, and in designing and evaluating the electronic modules. Also in the consortium are professionals outside of Pacific University from the School of Oriental Medicine and from the education division at OMSI.
b. The course brings together students from the arts, sciences, and professional schools. The students who are enrolled in the semester long course will in particular benefit from the participation of students from the professional schools in some units. The modular aspect of the course and the fact that some units will include different professional students will keep the course lively and interesting. As many of the students who are likely to take the semester long course are interested in professions in OT, PT, and optometry, the interaction in the classroom and in labs will provide our undergraduates a unique opportunity to gain insight into the careers they hope to enter. Also, the OP and PT programs have a great deal in common, but have had trouble coordinating their programs to provide an environment in which their students can interact. Our course provides such an environment.
2 INNOVATION: One of the most important features of the proposal is that it is innovative in a variety of ways.
a. Our course is innovative in its philosophical approach to presenting the history of science because we treat science in its cultural context. By this we mean that rather than looking at science in teleological terms, we are interested in showing how sciences develop within particular contexts in response to complex cultural matrices. In other words, science in a given culture is a product of the assumptions of that culture; it responds to and in turn changes world views. Our approach will incorporate a more traditional descriptive approach to the history of science with anthropological, historical, and philosophical methodologies, perspectives and materials. We treat science as mediated by culture and as an element which can be suitably described by Thomas Kuhn's concept of paradigmatic change.
b. Our proposal is innovative because we combine solid traditional academic study with active learning and involvement in and service to the community.
c. Our proposal is innovative because we combine science perspectives from a variety of cultures without favoring one over the other. This characteristic of the course solves the second need listed above. In as much as we are teaching the course from a cross-cultural perspective our goal is not to establish "who got it right and when," rather to examine assumptions about science, and to ask how those assumptions work themselves out in a given people's understanding of the universe.
d. Our proposal is innovative and meets the first need listed above because of its modular nature which allows the professional programs to work relevant portions of the course into their curren curricula. It should be noted that if faculty and students from the various programs at Pacific University are ever to be able to collaborate, it will have to be within a modular context. The curricula of the professional schools is so fixed, due to certification requirements, that it is unlikely that any single course taught within the undergraduate college will ever be appropriate for them. By the same token, graduate level courses taught in those programs will not meet the needs of the Liberal Arts College. But modular units can be adapted for use in a variety of programs, permitting faculty to shape their own courses around the units. And, of course, an electronically mediated environment further facilitates such cooperation.
e. Our proposal is innovative because it will include a high degree of computer-mediated delivery which will permit us to reach out not only to local audiences within both synchronous and asynchronous environments, but it will also permit us to include more distant audiences such as the students in the Eugene center/Lane Community College cooperative endeavor. The fact that elements of the course are electronic should not be taken to mean that our course will be a "computer course." Rather our proposal provides students an opportunity to learn in a variety of ways and at several levels. The computer element adds to the flexibility and accessibility of the course. It does not replace the teacher or substitute for the undergraduate classroom experience.
3. ACTIVE LEARNING: This proposal integrates active learning at several points which are are unusual in an academic course. Classroom learning will be combined with labs and interactive "real-life" experience in the community.
a. The fact that some of the course will be developed and taught within an electronic environment ensures active learning. This sort of environment is inherently student-directed and student-centered. Instructors become guides rather than sages, and students teach professors and each other. This is attested to by many studies and the accumulating experiences of faculty who have worked within such contexts.
b. The underlying philosophy of this course is a constructivist rather than a positivist one. We assume that our students not only will learn that there has always been an important cultural element in the development of science, but they will come to that understanding by constructing their own perspective through problem solving and dialogical interaction.
c. The students create electronic or physical models to better understand concepts taught in class. The models will be constructed by the students working together in labs. The models will not be built based on direction provided by the instructors; the labs will be student-directed, based on student research. This requires that the students learn the material by creating them, as well as demonstrating that learning has occurred.
d. The final project for those taking the entire course will require students to think about the relationship between themselves as learners and the community. The selection of the venue in which the final class presentations must be made by each student who then muct consider the impact that his/her presentation may have on the selected audience.
e. The site visits associated with some of the units are active in that the students will be working with local students and staff. They will gain experience outside the classroom and get a chance to observe how science is constructed in their own society.
C. APPLICATION OF THE PROPOSAL TO THE GRANT'S MINOR CRITERIA (return to index)
1. Evaluation:
a. We have explained above how the students will be evaluated in A.4.5 and 6 above.
b. We will evaluate the success of our project by asking all the constituencies which are involved to fill out an evaluative questionnaire which has been designed by students and the teaching consortium. Those constituencies include the students, the members of the teaching consortium, and the various audiences for the final presentations of student projects. The professors will share the results of the questionaires with the students after the course is finished. Close attention to the questionaires will permit the teaching consortium to evaluate the successes and failures of the course over time.
c. In addition, colleagues working at other institutions will be asked to evaluate the electronic elements of the course via the internet and to make suggestions for improvements as the course develops, and for subsequent iterations of the course.
2. Dissemination: Our proposal addresses dissemination of our final product in a variety of ways.
a. We will disseminate our electronic learning units to the professional schools, and to organizations which have worked with us on the project, such as OMSI, the School of Oriental Medicine, and the Education program in Eugene.
b. Our students' final projects will be presented in a
variety of community settings in Forest Grove and beyond.
c. The bulletin board archiving of class discussions as they develop will permit students in both this class and in later iterations of it to review these materials electronically.
d. The project will be written up in the Journal of the Association for History and Computing, an international journal in these related fields. We will also present our course at the annual meeting of the American branch of the Association, to be held at Baylor University in April of 2,000. In addition, the project will be presented at area secondary schools at the annual meeting of the association of the Oregon teachers of social science. It is possible that the project will also be disseminated via the Oregon Chautauqua program, though this possibility cannot be determined until later. Additional possible venues include the History of Science Society, the American Assocation for the History of Medicine, the Southern Association for the History of Medicine, and the American Historical Association, all of which provide opportunities for the discussion of pedagogical approaches to this topic.
3. Budget:
a. 3 x $5,000.00 for Barlow, Boersema and Rampton $15,000.00
b. stipends for guest lecturers and cost of transportation to site visits $400.00
c. $100.00 for each faculty member of the consortium $600.00
d. Cost of computer learning objects/models.
The objects/models will be prepared by student groups working with Bruce Eaton, the computer support staff member of the School of Education at Pacific University,and with student assistants from the Matsushita Center. The students will be responsible for concept and design, Bruce Eaton and the student assistants will provide the technical skills necessary for them to realize their vision within an electronic environment 1,200.00
e. Additional student assistance: 800.00
Total: 18,000.00
4. Model Potential
a. This course is not designed as a one-time event; rather we hope it will become a regular offering in the Pacific curriculum. It will not be as expensive to teach after the first year because the electronic learning objects will have been created.
b. We believe that the modular construction of this course will give us useful experience in creating subsequent courses or modules which can be used by diverse groups within the university community.
c. We believe that the important element of electronic development and delivery will give faculty and students experience and skills with which to develop subsequent such courses which can ultimately be delivered electronically both for on-campus and off-campus constituencies.
d. We believe that this course will increase the ability of faculty and staff to work with such external units as OMSI and the School of Oriental Medicine,
5. Civic Culture: Our proposal is very strong in terms of its awareness of civic culture.
a. By taking our students to various sites not only are we exposing them to the applications of science in the modern era, but we are building relationships with other groups in the Portland community which share our interests. These relations help both parties as bonds are created which result in better understanding and lay the groundwork for future collaboration and mutual support. The School of Oriental Medicine, for example, is interested in this project as a model for future electronically-mediated cooperative courses.
b. When students select audiences before whom they will arrange to present their final oral presentations, one of their challenges will be to think in terms of how they might serve their community. For instance, one of our Asian students might decide to present his/her material in a school that has a large Asian population, thus providing the students of the school with a strong role model. Another student might decide to present his/her material to people who are ill or in retirements homes and speak of the way age and wellness are perceived differently (more positively) in other cultures or time periods. Whatever the students decides about the venue of their final presentations, they will see the activity as academic, active, and community oriented. Using the facilities of the Matsushita Center for Electronic Learning at Pacific University, the students will have an opportunity to use computers on site so as to draw upon the electronic elements of the course.
c. By presenting the materials in area schools and to area teachers we not only more closely involve them with Pacific University, but we also demonstrate how the history of science can be taught in a dynamic and compartive manner. Local schools are still trying to understand how they might best use electronic materials in their courses, and this program will be a useful model for them.
D. BIOGRAPHIES OF THE MAJOR PARTICIPANTS (return to index)
Jeffrey Barlow is the Matsushita Chair of International and East Asian Studies and an historian of East Asia with an interest in Asian Science. He has lectured at OMSI and at Reed College on Asian science and is the co-author of China Doctor of John Day (Portland: Binford and Mort, second printing 1997), a work on Chinese medical practices in the 19th and early 20th century Pacific Northwest. He is the editor of the Journal of the Association for History and Computing, the only peer-reviewed journal in history on the World Wide Web. He has lectured widely and presented scholarly papers on the use of the World Wide Web and other electronic environments in K-16 education. For links to these and other resources, including a complete vitae, see his home page at: <http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/faculty/barlow.html>.
David Boersema is the Douglas C. Strain Chair of Natural Philosophy at Pacific University, where he teaches both philosophy and history of science. He has published a number of articles and presented papers at national and international conferences in the philosophy of science. He is presently completing work on a two-volume set of readings in the history of western science and beginning work on a manuscript on conceptual issues relating to the current on-going debates concerning mass extinctions. In addition, he is the chair of the Peace and Conflict Studies program at Pacific University. See his history of science syllabus at: <http://mcel.pacificu.edu/history/faculty/boersema/borsilly.html>
Martha Rampton is a medieval historian with a secondary emphasis in the history of the Islamic Middle East through1450. She has taught a history of science class at Hollins College, Virginia. The history of medieval medicine figures significantly in Dr. Rampton's area of expertise, which is the study of magic in the Middle Ages. She has presented papers at numerous conferences on the topic of science in the Middle Ages, and will participate in a panel discussion at the Leeds Medieval Conference in England on the current state of scholarship on medieval medicine. See her home page at; <http://mcel.pacificu.edu/history/faculty/rampton/rampton1.html>