Using a novel as the main text to teach physical science

It is often a challenge to create much interest, motivation, and engagement in physical science courses for non-STEM majors. We attempt to address this difficulty, and at the same time strive to achieve high levels of student learning, by choosing a novel as the main text of the course. Such a novel needs to include sufficient science content, correct science content, allow for appropriate lab experiments, allow for a complete coverage of the subject matter as is taught in typical courses, and to revolve about a topic that can generate student interest. We created a course on astrobiology - the science of life in the universe - that uses Carl Sagan’s Contact. We are able to teach the entire subject matter of a conventional course without omitting any topic. A typical class session includes discussion of the science content of one chapter of Contact (total of 24 chapters - appropriate for a full semester), after students are assigned to read it and answer pre-lecture questions. We measure the success of our approach by pre- and post course quizzes that measure student knowledge of the key knowledge areas - as proposed by J.S. Foster and J.C. Drew, Astrobiology 9, 325 (2009). We then calculate the students’ normalized gains and the effect size.