Over the past year and a half we have developed an innovative approach to the teaching of `Physical Science', a general education course typically found in the curricula of nearly every college and university. The new approach uses popular movies to illustrate the principles of physical science, analyzing individual scenes against the background of the fundamental physical laws. The impact of being able to understand why, in reality, the scene could or could not have occurred as depicted in the film, what the director got right and what he got wrong, has excited student interest enormously in a course that, when taught in the traditional mode, is usually considered to be `too hard and boring'. The performance of students on exams reflected the increased attention to and retention of basic physical concepts, a result that was a primary goal of the `Physics in Films' approach. Following the first offering of the revitalization of the Physical Science course, in which action and sci-fi films were the primary source of the scene clips used in class, the instructors have demonstrated the versatility of the approach by building variations of the course around other genres, as well --`Physics in Films: Superheroes' and `Physics in Films: Pseudoscience'. A parallel approach to the general education course in astronomy is currently being discussed; many others are in our thoughts.
We show how builtin sensors in mobile devices can be used as portable laboratories at the service of teaching experimental sciences, especially physics, in the last years of high school and first years of university. We describe experiments that previously required expensive apparatus or were not feasible in teaching laboratories. Finally, we discuss some perspectives about the use of sensors in the physics teaching.
This paper summarizes some challenges encountered and best practices established in several years of teaching Machine Learning for the Physical Sciences at the undergraduate and graduate level. I discuss motivations for teaching ML to physicists, desirable properties of pedagogical materials, such as accessibility, relevance, and likeness to real-world research problems, and give examples of components of teaching units.
Teaching color science to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) students is critical to preparing them for advanced topics such as graphics, visualization, imaging, Augmented/Virtual Reality. Color historically receive little attention in EECS curriculum; students find it difficult to grasp basic concepts. This is because today's pedagogical approaches are nonintuitive and lack rigor for teaching color science. We develop a set of interactive tutorials that teach color science to EECS students. Each tutorial is backed up by a mathematically rigorous narrative, but is presented in …
We discuss the development, implementation, and assessment of a course for science undergraduates designed to help them develop an awareness and a deeper appreciation of the intellectual demands of physics teaching. The course focused on increasing student enthusiasm and confidence in teaching by providing well supported teaching opportunities and exposure to physics education research. The course assessment methods include 1) pre/post-tests measures of attitude and expectations about science teaching, 2) self and peer evaluation of student teaching, 3) content-based pre/post-tests given to st…
Recruiting and retaining highly qualified physics and physical science teachers is critical for maintaining America's global competitiveness. Unfortunately, only one third of the high school teachers in physics have a degree in physics and an even smaller number of physical science teachers in middle school have a good grasp of the scientific content they teach. Moreover, teachers often lack adequate pedagogical content knowledge to teach science effectively. Here, we discuss the development, implementation, and assessment of a course for science and engineering undergraduates designed to incr…
This paper is aimed to develop formative actions about Science Technology and Society (STS) relations in the teaching of Physics in order to integrate Act 10.639/2003, which includes African, and Afro-Brazilian history and culture in school syllabuses. Besides we also aim to overcome the challenges found in the educational system and to enable students to learn about the contributions made by African societies regarding to the Science and technology. The methodological procedure included a written questionnaire, pre- and post-test, both with the students. The results have been proven relevant …
Computational thinking is a key skill for space science graduates, who must apply advanced problem-solving skills to model complex systems, analyse big data sets, and develop control software for mission-critical space systems. We describe our work using Design Thinking to understand the challenges that students face in learning these skills. In the MSc Space Science & Technology at University College Dublin, we have used insights from this process to develop new teaching strategies, including improved assessment rubrics, supported by workshops promoting collaborative programming techniques. W…
We present a simple, accessible, yet rigorous outreach/educational program focused on quantum information science and technology for high-school and early undergraduate students. This program allows students to perform meaningful hands-on calculations with quantum circuits and algorithms, without requiring knowledge of advanced mathematics. A combination of pen-and-paper exercises and IBM Q simulations helps students understand the structure of quantum gates and circuits, as well as the principles of superposition, entanglement, and measurement in quantum mechanics.
We describe an ecosystem for teaching data science (DS) to engineers which blends theory, methods, and applications, developed at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Universidad de Chile, over the last three years. This initiative has been motivated by the increasing demand for DS qualifications both from academic and professional environments. The ecosystem is distributed in a collaborative fashion across three departments in the above Faculty and includes postgraduate programmes, courses, professional diplomas, data repositories, laboratories, trainee programmes, and internshi…
Understanding Of Size And Scale And Order-Of-Magnitude Reasoning In Secondary Science: A Teaching Experiment With Worked Examples As Educational Scaffold
In this paper we discuss the use of sensors incorporated in mobile devices as possible mobile laboratories at the service of teaching experimental sciences. Mobile devices, smartphones, tablets, laptops, microbit cards, are a resource for making measurements of the physical world, since they have a set of built-in sensors that allow to measure position, linear speed, angular speed, acceleration, pressure, sound, color, magnetic field, proximity or luminosity, among others. Also, these devices have greatly improved the performance of their video cameras, allowing to easily shoot at high speed a…
In view of the difficulties encountered in science teaching, specifically in the teaching of physics, studies aim to develop methodologies that help science teaching. In this context, the present work proposes the use of the Arduino platform as a methodological tool to improve the teaching of physics in high school. For this purpose, the objective of the work was to produce physics experiments with the aid of Arduino that can be used in the classroom and thus we investigated that the experiments provided students with a dynamic and close to ideal class in physics teaching. For the development …
This is an editorial report on the outcomes of an international conference sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) (REESE-1205273) to the School of Education at Boston University and the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University for a conference titled: How Can the History and Philosophy of Science Contribute to Contemporary U.S. Science Teaching? The presentations of the conference speakers and the reports of the working groups are reviewed. Multiple themes emerged for K-16 education from the perspective of the history and philosophy of science.…
The rapid evolution of intelligent electronic devices makes information technology, computer science and electronics strongly related to the teaching of natural sciences. Today almost everybody has a smart phone that can convert light, temperature, movement, sound to numbers, therefore all these can be processed, analysed, displayed, stored, shared by software applications. The fundamental question is how education can follow this knowledge and how can education take its advantages. Components and methods of modern technology are available for education also, teachers and students can play wit…
We describe an introductory data science course, entitled Introduction to Data Science, offered at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The course introduced general programming concepts by using the Python programming language with an emphasis on data preparation, processing, and presentation. The course had no prerequisites, and students were not expected to have any programming experience. This introductory course was designed to cover a wide range of topics, from the nature of data, to storage, to visualization, to probability and statistical analysis, to cloud and high performa…
A primary goal of science and engineering (S & E) education is to produce good problem solvers, but how to best teach and measure the quality of problem-solving remains unclear. The process is complex, multifaceted, and not fully characterized. Here we present a theoretical framework of the S & E problem-solving process as a set of specific interlinked decisions. This theory is empirically grounded and describes the entire process. To develop this theory, we interviewed 52 successful scientists and engineers (experts) spanning different disciplines, including biology and medicine. They describ…
Capitalizing on the enthusiasm about space science in the general public, our goal as an interdisciplinary group of scholars is to design and teach a new team-taught interdisciplinary course, "Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration (PoSE)" at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) where we currently teach. We believe that this course will not only help overcome disciplinary silos to advance our understanding of space and critically examine its ethical ramifications, but also will better educate the public on how science works and help overcome the science skepticism that has unfort…
In 2004 Denmark introduced a compulsory integrated science course the most popular upper secondary study program. One of the nation-wide course aims are for students to "achieve knowledge about some of the central scientific issues and their social, ethical, and historical perspectives". This is to be done via collaboration between the subjects, and often involves physics and another scientific subject. The official teaching plans further state that mathematics must be used for analysing data. We use network analysis to study six different implementations of the course in terms of the structur…
The Einstein-First project aims to change the paradigm of school science teaching through the introduction of modern Einsteinian concepts of space and time, gravity and quanta at an early age. These concepts are rarely taught to school students despite their central importance to modern science and technology. The key to implementing the Einstein-First curriculum is the development of appropriate models and analogies. This paper is the first part of a three-paper series. It presents the conceptual foundation of our approach, based on simple physical models and analogies, followed by a detailed…
Introductory astronomy is one of the most widely-taken university science courses and a common means of satisfying general education requirements. This course is frequently taught in large sections by a variety of instructors, some with little formal training in astronomy. Thus, instructors often struggle to help students connect with what is typically their last formal science experience. At California State University Fullerton, we have engaged in reform efforts in the teaching of introductory astronomy. We report on the model of reform implementation with several key features that we believ…
During recent collaboration with colleagues to revise our institution's general-education curriculum, I encountered many perceptions of what we mean by the Natural Sciences. I was surprised to find that perceptions of scientific pedagogy varied significantly among the scientific disciplines, especially concerning issues of philosophy of science and epistemology, manifested in the approaches to teaching theoretical concepts and their development. These realizations suggest that Physics occupies a singular role in college curricula, introducing students, even at the introductory level, to the ac…
Research in teaching and learning sequence design. To what extent do designers theoretical orientations about learning and the nature of science shape design decisions
This article provides brief guidance for a successful graduate teaching assistantship at our school. Although the components mentioned in this article are primarily aimed at mathematics courses designated as the "Basic Science and Mathematics" (BSM) modules with multiple sections, the principle can also be applied and adapted to other courses and institutions as well.
Building Bridges in Quantum Information Science Education: Expert Insights to Guide Framework Development for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Evolution of Common Language
Computation is a central aspect of modern science and engineering work, and yet, computational instruction has yet to fully pervade university STEM curricula. In physics, we have begun to integrate computation into our courses in a variety of ways. Here, we discuss a method for integrating computation into calculus-based mechanics where the lecture and laboratory for the course are decoupled. At Michigan State University, we have developed a "lecture" course, called "Projects and Practices in Physics", where science and engineering students solve complex problems in groups of four using analyt…
This article proposes and discusses qualitatively the use of a didactic board game in Science Education for high school students. The game contemplates in an interdisciplinary way the areas of Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Astronomy and is based on the development of the cognitive structure of the students through the act of drawing the concepts addressed in the classroom, also aiming at socialization through teamwork and the inclusion of students with hearing impairment. The game was created in a physics teacher education course and also aims to promote reflection on teaching practice and t…
The paper deals with pedagogical heritage of A.V. Usova (1921-2014) that yields insights into problems of interdisciplinary relationship in the school science education system. Her fundamental works were used as teaching guides in the preparation of physics teachers of all pedagogical universities of the Soviet Union and Russia. In this study, professor Usova is not an interdisciplinary researcher; she is a researcher of interdisciplinarity. Here is provided a short and consistent description of her views on teaching physics as a foundation of educational interdisciplinarity. Usova elaborated …
Cultural Astronomy is interdisciplinary connecting the arts, humanities, social & physical sciences. Data collection methods and theories are used from many disciplines and meld with methods and theories within cultural astronomy. The burden on the student is that to do cultural astronomy research it is necessary to be widely read within and across disciplines. I developed a series of courses that divided cultural astronomy content into broad regions such as Africa, North America, and the Pacific. The courses were structured to accommodate students from all parts of the university, but had to …
In this paper we propose strategies and methodologies of teaching topics in high school physics, through a show of Educational Robotics. The Exhibition was part of a set of actions promoted by a brazilian government program of incentive for teaching activities (PIBID) and whose primary focus is the training of teachers, improvement of teaching in public schools, dissemination of science and formation of new scientists and researchers. By means of workshops, banners and prototyping of robotics, we are able to create a connection between the study areas and their surrounding, making learning mea…
Preparing students for the quantum information revolution: Interdisciplinary teaching, curriculum development, and advising in quantum information science and engineering
Elementary particle physics is gradually implemented into science curricula at high school level. However, common presentations on educational, semi-technical or popular level contain or support severe misconceptions. We discuss in particular the notion of `particle', the interaction between them and the use of Feynman diagrams. In many cases the true novelty of particle physics (i.e. quantum field theory) is largely ignored. We also suggest reasons for this widespread distortions of particle physics in popular accounts.
