Acquiring the mathematical, conceptual, and problem-solving skills required in university-level physics courses is hard work, and the average student often lacks the knowledge and study skills they need to succeed in the introductory courses. Here we propose a new pedagogical model and a straight-forwardly reproducible set of internet-based testing tools. Our work to address some of the most important student deficiencies is based on three fundamental principles: balancing skill level and challenge, providing clear goals and feedback at every stage, and allowing repetition without penalty. Our tools include an Automated Mathematics Evaluation System (AMES), a Computerized Homework Assignment Grading System (CHAGS), and a set of after-homework quizzes and mini-practice exams (QUizzes Intended to Consolidate Knowledge, or QUICK). We describe how these tools are incorporated into the course, and present some preliminary results on their effectiveness.
Most science classes and in particular Physics are delivered through traditional teaching methods. More specifically, in the traditional stand-and-deliver lecture, the information was transmitted unilaterally from the teacher to the student and hence the students are only passive participants. Recent studies revealed that traditional lectures are inefficient and even more do not help students understand key concepts or develop critical thinking skills. Mazur described the traditional lecture as the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners. However, one of th…
We present the impact on student self-efficacy of an introductory physics for life-science students course taught using a Team-Based Learning pedagogy. We measured self-efficacy using the validated quantitative Sources of Self-Efficacy in Science Courses - Physics, SOSESC-P, survey developed by Fencl and Scheel. Data were collected both at the beginning and end of the semester to evaluate the impact of shifts in individual self-efficacy. After describing the key features of the pedagogy, we find that the Team-Based Learning system at University of Massachusetts Amherst, results in significant …
In this paper, we describe how we transformed our large-enrollment introductory physics sequence for life-science students to a Lecture/Studio format and aligned the physics concepts with authentic biological applications. We have reformed the pedagogy to include research-validated practices in interactive engagement, and accomplished our goals of enhanced learning gains, sustainability, and adoptability of our course reforms. The active engagement at the heart of the Lecture/Studio format results in comparable or enhanced learning gains (as measured by validated concept surveys) when compared…
EBI is a further education establishment which provides education in applied industrial biology at level of MSc engineering degree. Fluid mechanics at EBI was considered by students as difficult who seemed somewhat unmotivated. In order to motivate them, we applied a new play-based pedagogy. Students were asked to draw inspiration from everyday life situations to find applications of fluid mechanics and to do experiments to verify and validate some theoretical results obtained in course. In this paper, we present an innovative teaching/learning pedagogy which includes the concept of learning t…
This workshop aims to demonstrate how the Tracker Video Analysis and Modeling Tool engages, enables and empowers teachers to be learners so that we can be leaders in our teaching practice. Through this workshop, the kinematics of a falling ball and a projectile motion are explored using video analysis and in the later video modeling. We hope to lead and inspire other teachers by facilitating their experiences with this ICT-enabled video modeling pedagogy (Brown, 2008) and free tool for facilitating students-centered active learning, thus motivate students to be more self-directed.
The objective of this project is to compare the effectiveness of teaching styles used in high school physics classes and the methods used to assess them. We would like to determine those approaches to physics at the high schools that work and those that do not work for students from different demographics. We sent out a survey to high school physics teachers in the U.S. Midwest states, inquiring about student preparation, pedagogy in the classroom, assessment and professional development. We found that there are differences in the practices of physics teachers in all of these areas, depending …
For the last four years, the School of Physics at Georgia Tech have been preparing new Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) through a program that integrates pedagogy, physics content, and professional development strategies. Here we discuss various assessments we have used to evaluate the program, among them surveys, GTA self-reporting, and end-of-semester student evaluations. Our results indicate that GTAs who participate in the program find its practical activities useful, feel better prepared for teaching, make use of learner-centered teaching strategies, and receive higher scores in teachi…
We present this work like software tool developed in Python, based on a methodology to obtain the electric field produced by n charges. The tool was developed and implemented in courses of electromagnetism and laboratory in three institutions of higher education. The aim for this work is to incorporate information and communication technologies (ICTs) at the university, in accordance with the programs promoted by the Colombian Ministry of Education. We wanted to connect the students with sensitives experiences of the physical phenomena that allow them to improve their experience of learning of…
Paired (or co-)teaching is an arrangement in which two faculty are collaboratively responsible for all aspects of teaching a course. By pairing an instructor experienced in research-based instructional strategies (RBIS) with an instructor with little or no experience in RBIS, paired teaching can be used to promote the adoption of RBIS. Using data from post-course interviews with the novice instructors of four such arrangements, we seek to describe factors that make for effective professional development in teaching via paired teaching. We suggest that the novice instructor's approach to the pa…
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…
Physics education research has consistently shown that students have higher learning outcomes when enrolled in interactive-engagement courses. Consequently, many schools are actively reforming their introductory curricula. For courses where the interactive sections (labs, tutorials, and/or workshops) are mostly taught by graduate student teaching assistants (TAs), good TAs are instrumental to the success of the reform. Many studies have investigated specific interactions between TAs and students, but more can be learned through a holistic examination of TA-student interactions. Over the course…
The goal of this paper is have bringing a reflect on the experience of applying a continuing education course in Astronomy Teaching for teachers from two municipal networks, know Laranja da Terra (ES) and Guarapari (ES). Here we are presenting a brief of the course offered by Ifes-Guarapari for these networks as well as analyzes the experience reports, font of collection of data, done by the course participants, which was guided by diagnostic questions that allowed the systematization of the course participants' perceptions in the developed training process. After the systematization and analy…
University courses in conceptual physics and astronomy typically serve as the terminal science experience for non-science majors. Significant work has gone into developing research-verified pedagogical methods for the algebra- and calculus-based physics courses typically populated by natural and physical science majors; however, there is significantly less volume in the literature concerning the non-science population. This is quickly changing, and large, repeatable gains on concept tests are being reported. However, we may be losing sight of what is arguably the most important goal of such a …
A major roadblock to effective climate education is the lack of radical visions (Kwauk, 2020) for engaging with climate change and related social-environmental crises in the classroom. Key aspects of the climate system: its inherent complexity and transdisciplinarity, the entanglement of social and natural systems, and the fact that it spans large scales of space and time - all present serious challenges to our modern, compartmentalized formal education systems. I present an argument for a justice-centered, inter-to-transdisciplinary conceptualization of climate change at the nexus of science,…
Most STEM students experience the introductory physics sequence in large-enrollment (N $\gtrsim$ 100 students) classrooms, led by one lecturer and supported by a few teaching assistants. This work describes methods and principles we used to create an effective "flipped classroom" in large- enrollment introductory physics courses by replacing a majority of traditional lecture time with in-class student-driven activity worksheets. In this work, we compare student learning in courses taught by the authors with the flipped classroom pedagogy versus a more traditional pedagogy. By comparing identic…
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…
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…
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…
Understanding instructor attitudes and approaches to teaching quantum mechanics can be helpful in developing research-based learning tools. Here we discuss the findings from a survey in which 13 instructors reflected on issues related to quantum mechanics teaching. Topics included opinions about the goals of a quantum mechanics course, general challenges in teaching the subject, student preparation for the course, comparison between their own learning of quantum mechanics vs. how they teach it and the extent to which contemporary topics are incorporated into the syllabus.
Authentic research as a method of teaching science is gaining popularity in high schools and colleges. To make this research experience most efficient, students need adequate preparation in traditional science courses. Existing materials available for inquiry-based teaching methods are not intended to prepare a student for independent research. We discuss principles for organization of laboratory classes with this goal in mind and provide examples that we have implemented for algebra-based physics, calculus-based physics, and honors chemistry for high school students.
Using smartphones in experimental physics teachings offers many advantages in term of engagement, pedagogy and flexibility. But it presents the drawbacks of possibly endangering the device and also facing the heterogeneity of available sensors on different smartphones. We present a low-cost alternative that preserves the advantages of smartphones: using a microcontroller equipped with a large variety of sensors that transmits data to a smartphone using Bluetooth Low-Energy protocol. This device can be lent to students with little risks and used to perform a wide range of experiments. It opens …
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…
Modern students encounter big, messy data sets long before setting foot in our classrooms. Many of our students need to develop skills in exploratory data analysis and multivariate analysis techniques for their jobs after college, but these topics are not covered in introductory statistics courses. This case study describes my experience in designing and teaching a course on multivariate data analysis with no pre-requisites, using real data, active learning, and other activities to help students tackle the material.
Most introductory quantum physics instructors would agree that transitioning students from classical to quantum thinking is an important learning goal, but may disagree on whether or how this can be accomplished. Although (and perhaps because) physicists have long debated the physical interpretation of quantum theory, many instructors choose to avoid emphasizing interpretive themes; or they discuss the views of scientists in their classrooms, but do not adequately attend to student interpretations. In this synthesis and extension of prior work, we demonstrate: (1) instructors vary in their app…
Over the past 10 years, we have developed at University Paris Sud a first year course on geometrical optics centered on experimentation. In contrast with the traditional top-down learning structure usually applied at university, in which practical sessions are often a mere verification of the laws taught during preceding lectures, this course promotes "active learning" and focuses on experiments made by the students. Interaction among students and self questioning are strongly encouraged and practicing comes first, before any theoretical knowledge. Through a series of concrete examples, the pr…
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.
We describe an undergraduate course where physics students are asked to conceive an outreach project of their own. The course alternates between the project conception and teachings about pedagogy and outreach, and ends in a public show. We describe its practical implementation and benefits. Through a student survey and an analysis of their projects, we discuss the merits and flaws of this "learning-by-doing" teaching approach for physics.
Just as expert physicists vary in their personal stances on interpretation in quantum mechanics, instructors vary on whether and how to teach interpretations of quantum phenomena in introductory modern physics courses. In this paper, we document variations in instructional approaches with respect to interpretation in two similar modern physics courses recently taught at the University of Colorado, and examine associated impacts on student perspectives regarding quantum physics. We find students are more likely to prefer realist interpretations of quantum-mechanical systems when instructors are…
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…
We profiled three aspects of MOOCs from the perspective of viewing behaviors, the most prominent and common ones of MOOC learning. They were learner classification, course attraction, teaching order and learning order. Based on viewing behavior data, we provided a non-parametric algorithm to categorize learners, which helped to narrow the scope of finding potential all-rounders, and a method to measure the correlations between teaching order and learning order, which helped to assign teaching contents. Using information entropy, we provided an index to measure course attraction, which integrat…
The tree ammeter method and the three voltmeter method are used for measurements of power. More specifically, they are used to calculate the power factor of a specific load. Both methods are used on the Fundamentals of electrical engineering course in professional study of electrical engineering at the Zagreb University of Applied Sciences as an introduction to measurements of power and phasor arithmetic. Both methods are susceptible to accuracy problems caused by small errors in measuring devices. These accuracy problems in specific scenarios that were used during the course presented an oppo…
In this small scale study we demonstrate how a gamified teaching setup can be used effectively to support student learning in a quantum mechanics course. The quantum mechanics games were research games, which were played during lectures and the learning was measured with a pretest/posttest method with promising results. The study works as a pilot study to guide the planning of quantum mechanics courses in the future at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Collaboration among students is fundamental for knowledge building and competency development. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of student collaboration depends on the extent that these interactions take place under conditions that favor commitment, trust, and decision-making among those who interact. The sanitary situation and the transition to remote teaching has added new challenges for collaboration given that students' interactions are mediated by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). In this study we explore the effectiveness of different collaborative relationships on physics…
To enhance student learning, we demonstrate an experimental study to analyze student learning outcomes in online and in-class sections of a core data communications course of the Undergraduate IT program in the Information Sciences and Technology (IST) Department at George Mason University (GMU). In this study, student performance is evaluated based on course assessments. This includes home and lab assignments, skill-based assessment, and traditional midterm exam across all 4 sections of the course. All sections have analogous content, assessment plan and teaching methodologies. Student demogr…
We occasionally include projects in our learner-centered introductory astronomy college course to enable non-science major students explore some astronomical concepts in more detail than otherwise. Such projects also highlight ongoing or upcoming astronomical events. We hope that students will feel more interested in astronomy through projects tied to astronomical events. In Spring 2012, we offered short essays focused on eclipses, transits and occultations to promote the rare transit of Venus that occurred on June 5th, 2012. We asked students to write two short essays from three that were off…
Quantum computing harnesses quantum laws of nature to enable new types of algorithms, not efficiently possible on traditional computers, that may lead to breakthroughs in crucial areas like materials science and chemistry. There is rapidly growing demand for a quantum workforce educated in the basics of quantum computing, in particular in quantum programming. However, there are few offerings for non-specialists and little information on best practices for training computer science and engineering students. In this report we describe our experience teaching an undergraduate course on quantum co…
