Other strategies to improve learning recognize the influence
of student beliefs about science and how those beliefs
affect their interest in the material and, likewise, their retention
of content. Specific interventions as straightforward as
explaining how a topic operates in the real world and showing
how it connects to something the student already knows
have been shown to prevent decline along the spectrum of
beliefs toward more novice-like. Further, a variety of technological
approaches have also been shown to be quite effective
at facilitating desired learning and extending instructors’
abilities to engage and guide far more students at once than is
possible in a typical lecture course. For example, my research
group has created and tested more than 60 online interactive
simulations and made them available for free at http://phet.
colorado.edu.