RESEARCH-BASED TEACHING FOR AN INTERDISCIPLINARY MATERIALS SCIENCE GENERAL EDUCATION COURSE: A DESIGN FRAMEWORK AND IMPLEMENTATION PATHWAY
Keywords:
Research-based teaching, Inquiry-based learning, Course-based undergraduate research, Materials science education, General education, Non-majors, Interdisciplinary curriculum, Design-based research, Scientific literacy, Higher educationAbstract
General education science courses for non-majors often default to diluted lectures, a problem sharp enough in China to have earned its own label, the shuike (watered-down courses) and pressing enough that reform now targets the design of individual courses. Materials science is an unusually good vehicle for a better course. It is everywhere in daily life, and it is interdisciplinary by construction, joining physics, chemistry, and engineering. Yet materials education research addresses majors, general education science rarely uses materials, and the two have not been joined through research-based teaching. This paper presents a literature-grounded design framework for a materials science general education course built on authentic inquiry, together with an implementation pathway and an evaluation plan. Following the design-based research tradition, it reports the first cycle, the analysis and design, and reports no student data. Synthesizing four literatures, research-based teaching, materials education, general education science for non-majors, and interdisciplinary higher education, the framework derives six design principles and organizes a one-semester course into four interdisciplinary modules on a shared inquiry cycle, culminating in a course-based research capstone scaled for non-majors. The paper sets out a staged rollout that answers the known failure modes of interdisciplinary teaching, and an evaluation plan with predefined revision triggers that would close the design cycle. The framework gives Chinese general education a quality-signaling course model and the Emerging Engineering Education agenda a concrete interdisciplinary instrument, while remaining adaptable beyond that context. Its effectiveness awaits the empirical second cycle.References
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