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INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research

International Partnership for Computing in Science Education

Alternative title: Internasjonalt partnerskap for beregninger i naturvitenskapelig og matematisk utdanning

Awarded: NOK 4.5 mill.

This project aimed at developing, through new learning material, courses for university teachers and teaching assistants, as well as proper assessment programs and educational research , how computing can be integrated in the best possible way across disciplines. The project has established a partnership between Michigan State University, Oregon State University and University of Colorado at Boulder in the USA. and the University of Oslo in Norway State. The goal of the partnership has been to provide unique and novel insights about how computing can be smoothly integrated in modern science education. The program has facilitated student and researcher exchange between the institutions and common development of learning material and teaching methods. Several long-lasting collaborations have been initiated through the project in the form of common projects, publications and adjunct positions across the institutions extending beyond the project period. Three large international meetings were organized in 2022 – bringing together researchers after the pandemic to forge an agenda for the integration of computing into education with an associated research project to build the knowledge basis for these educational developmental activities. Education research projects have been initiated that have studied educational developments and practices across at least two partner institutions. The project has developed a foundation for US-Norwegian collaborations and partnerships, which will last well beyond the project period. The project has also contributed to establish the Center for Computing in Science Education at the Universitety of Oslo as an internationally renowned center for development and research on computing in educational programs.

The use of computational methods are changing all sciences and their practice, and is an important twentieth century skill that all students need to master to relevant in their fields. Through this project, we have provided new research-based insight into how to develop, implement and assess teaching and learning of computing in STEM disciplines. The learning materials we have developed in the form of courses and textbooks are used internationally and are helping shape the agenda on what computational skills students need to master, how these skills should be taught, and how these skills and competences impact their disciplinary understanding. The meetings and workshops organized through this project have established the field of computational methods in science education as an internationally recognised field of education research and established the University of Oslo as the leading international institution in both the impementation of a new curriculum and in providing the knowledge basis for such as curriculum. This will shape education in Norway, Europe and internattionally in the years to come and help educate a new generation fo computationally proficient students to address the grand challenges we face as societies.

Computing forms now an integrated and central part of essentially all aspects of modern science and engineering, from basic research to industrial and societal applications. It has become clear that a large fraction of theoretical and experimental science requires a high level of computational sophistication to competently pursue many scientific problems, a trend that is likely to grow with time as computers increase in power and experimental data sets grow exponentially. These observations are applicable to essentially all disciplines in the Sciences. Beyond its increasing centrality in research, the use of computational modeling in the classroom setting provides students with insights that can go well beyond those resulting from pencil-and-paper manipulation of equations. In particular, the ability to closely examine the behavior of systems that are too complex to be easily analytically tractable, or that have no analytic solutions (i.e., many systems of practical interest), helps to develop intuition that is unavailable to many students from analytic calculation. It is in this context this proposal finds its rationale. We aim at uniting the strengths of research and educational activities at the involved universities. Through workshops, summer programs, new learning material, courses for university teachers, exchange of faculty and students at all levels, the establishment of this network has the potential to add significant new insights and experiences on how computing can be integrated in a seamless way in our basic science education. The outcome of the various research and educational projects are expected to be of great importance and transferable to universities worldwide. The outcome of this project is of strategic importance for all partners. It prepares the ground for the integration of computing in education and thereby how to design our future education.

Funding scheme:

INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research