
As an educator working to reform introductory undergraduate courses, I was perplexed by B. Alberts's announcement about a Science prize for inquiry-based lab modules (“A new college Science prize,” Editorial, 7 January, p. [10][1]). Given that inquiry modules are readily available in a variety of excellent, peer-reviewed resources ([ 1 ][2]–[ 6 ][3]), students' inexperience with this lesson format is likely not due to lack of access to such materials. The persistent deficiencies in college science teaching discussed in the Editorial point to a problem much larger than availability of inquiry modules. Real transformation, as outlined in the recent AAAS Vision and Change “call to action,” for example ([ 7 ][4]), requires much more than inquiry teaching. For instance, faculty need to assess how well students entering a course can apply scientific thinking to questions about major concepts, and then assess whether such critical thinking skills improve after instruction. In my view, faculty who teach truly transformed science courses, as defined by elements such as these, deserve the honors. 1. [↵][5]The National Science Digital Library ([nsdl.org][6]). 2. Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning ([pogil.org][7]). 3. Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College ([serc.carleton.edu][8]). 4. Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology ([tiee.ecoed.net][9]). 5. Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning Online ([taste.merlot.org/merlotcollection.html][10]). 6. [↵][11]Association for Biology Laboratory Instruction ([ableweb.org/][12]). 7. [↵][13]Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education: A Call to Action (American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC, 2010). [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1202096 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-6 [4]: #ref-7 [5]: #xref-ref-1-1 "View reference 1 in text" [6]: http://nsdl.org [7]: http://pogil.org [8]: http://serc.carleton.edu [9]: http://tiee.ecoed.net [10]: http://taste.merlot.org/merlotcollection.html [11]: #xref-ref-6-1 "View reference 6 in text" [12]: http://ableweb.org/ [13]: #xref-ref-7-1 "View reference 7 in text"
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