Improving STEM Education Together

Students are paying too much for poor STEM course experiences. Learn how to use evidence-based instructional practices to improve teaching, course designs, and student success. And have lots of fun and satisfaction in the process.

About
Workshops
STEM Redesigns
Materials

engaging you and your faculty

High Impact Workshops and Keynotes

Dr. Justin Shaffer applies his extensive 13+ year experience in the classroom as a STEM teaching professor, his skills in discipline-based education research studying effective STEM course design and active learning, and his enthusiasm for working with faculty, future faculty, and academic leaders to partner with you to learn about how evidence-based strategies can transform your courses, teaching, programs, and student outcomes. Reach out to Justin to bring him to your campus or organization for an engaging, practical, and fun-filled keynote, workshop, or seminar.

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Make them your best

STEM Course and Curriculum Redesigns

Effective STEM course design and teaching are critically important for maximizing student engagement and improving student outcomes. When tailored to your own specific institution and situation, you will be able to use evidence-based strategies to help your STEM students successfully navigate your program and achieve exceptional career goals. Contact Justin to partner with him to start redesigning your STEM courses and curricula today.

A practical guide

High Structure Course Design Book

Justin’s book from the Macmillan Learning Scientific Teaching Series (released in June 2025) walks the reader through all of the steps necessary to create, implement, and assess a high structure STEM course.

Hands-on with course design

Alignment: A Course Design Card Deck

Course design can be difficult but with practice comes better course designs and thus better student outcomes. Introducing Alignment: A Course Design Card Deck which Justin designed to help give instructors practice at designing courses via aligning assessments and activities to learning objectives and tailoring this process to specific course design situations and figuring out how to overcome barriers.

support your students

Practice: A Student Success Card Deck

In order to become great at anything in life, practice is universally required and being a great student is no exception. Introducing Practice: A Student Success Card Deck which Justin designed to help give high school and college students a way to explore effective study strategies and how to apply them to a variety of courses and topics. Additionally, this deck will help students learn how to overcome barriers to studying and pursue overarching skills that will lead to success.

Tips and Tricks and advice

Recombinant Teaching Podcast

This is not your typical higher ed interview podcast; rather, Recombinant Teaching: STEM Education Office Hours is all about YOU and the questions that you have related to STEM pedagogy, student success, academic careers, and everything in between.

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Upcoming Events

Catch Justin at these events and reach out to book your own.

Date	Host	Event
April 2026	Ohio Strong Start in Science	Inquiry-based labs and CUREs
April 2026	Delaware Technical Community College	Designing effective pre- and after-class activities
April 2026	Grand Canyon University LOPE Day	Designing effective and engaging courses (with the aid of and in spite of AI)
April 2026	Colorado School of Mines Trefny Teaching, Learning, & Assessment Conference	Active Learning in Large Lectures
April 2026	Virginia Tech Department of Engineering Education	Course design and assessment Q&A
May 2026	Ohio Strong Start in Science	Using student and self-feedback to improve teaching
May 2026	University of North Carolina	Getting started in STEMM education research
May 2026	Delaware Technical Community College	Authentic and alternative summative assessments
May 2026	Delaware Technical Community College	Fostering student study strategies and success skills
August 2026	Innovative Educators	Creating engaging and effective courses to promote student success

Engaging faculty and improving STEM course design worldwide

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about Justin

Dr. Justin Shaffer is the Founder of Recombinant Education, the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies, and a Teaching Professor in Chemical and Biological Engineering and in Quantitative Biosciences and Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Justin has been a university STEM professor, discipline-based education researcher, and faculty and student mentor since 2012. Over the past 13+ years, Justin has taught 10,000+ students using evidence-based pedagogies at a variety of institutions in several disciplines and formats and has worked with faculty to add evidence-based practices to their courses via workshops and 1:1 consulting.

STEM Course and Curriculum Redesigns

Justin will work with you on a three-step process to initially characterize your program’s current teaching, course design, and student outcomes landscape, to provide professional development strategies and events for you and your faculty on evidence-based practices adoption and course structure revision, and finally to re-assess and document the positive impacts that have resulted from this process. All steps of the process are fully customizable to your program and will work in any STEM discipline.

Baseline Characterization

Justin begins the process by using reliable and validated instruments published in the STEM education literature to determine the levels of EBIPs and student-centered pedagogy adoption by your faculty in your program and explore measures of student success.

Professional Development

Once Justin knows landscape of your courses, he will develop and implement a tailored and specific professional development approach to enact positive changes with you and your faculty which will lead to improved student outcomes for your program.

Follow-up Assessment

Justin will follow-up and repeat the baseline to document the positive changes that have accrued due to the professional development around EBIPs that have been implemented. You will be able to use this evidence to promote your commitment to student success.

STEM Teaching Workshops and Keynotes

Justin gives engaging and interactive STEM teaching workshops, keynotes, plenary talks, seminars, and panel discussions to faculty, staff, administrators, and students on the broad topics of course and curriculum design, evidence-based teaching practices, SoTL and DBER, and evaluation of teaching practices. All workshops and talks include pre-workshop Zoom meetings and surveys with relevant stakeholders in order to make the workshops or talks as specific as possible to your university and situation. All STEM teaching workshops are customizable to your needs in terms of length, format, audience, and frequency.

STEM Teaching Materials

Browse below for samples of STEM teaching materials that Justin uses in his own courses. Feel free to use these for your own purposes and contact Justin if you have any questions!