No Mystery to Appeal of Some Science-Conference Sessions

By Peter West

Anaheim, Calif.--The myriad sessions open to the 13,000 educators who attended the annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association here ranged from "Authentic Assessment in the Classroom'' to the more whimsical "Batty About Bats.''

And it often was hard to figure out why some became standing-room-only events while others devolved into one-on-one presentations.

But the organizers of "Murder in the Science Lab?''--an award-winning lesson on forensic science that coaxes students into working with microscopes and other tools to unlock "clues'' to whether a researcher was killed on the job--weren't surprised that their audience...