How Is Science Being Taught? Measuring Evidence-Based Teaching Practices across Undergraduate Science Departments.

While there is a wealth of research evidencing the benefits of active-learning approaches, the extent to which these teaching practices are adopted in the sciences is not well known. The aim of this study is to establish an evidential baseline of teaching practices across a bachelor of science degree program at a large research-intensive Australian university. Our purpose is to contribute to knowledge on the adoption levels of evidence-based teaching practices by faculty within a science degree program and inform our science curriculum review in practical terms. We used the Teaching Practices Inventory (TPI) to measure the use of evidence-based teaching approaches in 129 courses (units of study) across 13 departments. We compared the results with those from a Canadian institution to identify areas in need of improvement at our institution. We applied a regression analysis to the data and found that the adoption of evidence-based teaching practices differs by discipline and is higher in first-year classes at our institution. The study demonstrates that the TPI can be used in different institutional contexts and provides data that can inform practice and policy.

Measuring the 2D baryon acoustic oscillation signal of galaxies in WiggleZ: cosmological constraints.

We present results from the 2D anisotropic baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) signal present in the final data set from the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey. We analyse the WiggleZ data in two ways: first using the full shape of the 2D correlation function and secondly focusing only on the position of the BAO peak in the reconstructed data set. When fitting for the full shape of the 2D correlation function we use a multipole expansion to compare with theory. When we use the reconstructed data we marginalize over the shape and just measure the position of the BAO peak, analysing the data in wedges separating the signal along the line of sight from that parallel to the line of sight. We verify our method with mock data and find the results to be free of bias or systematic offsets. We also redo the pre-reconstruction angle-averaged (1D) WiggleZ BAO analysis with an improved covariance and present an updated result. The final results are presented in the form of Ω c h2, H(z), and DA (z) for three redshift bins with effective redshifts z = 0.44, 0.60, and 0.73. Within these bins and methodologies, we recover constraints between 5 and 22 per cent error. Our cosmological constraints are consistent with flat ΛCDM cosmology and agree with results from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey.