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At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we completely transformed our two-course sequence of introductory physics for life science majors (IPLS) into the integrated lecture/studio format using biological phenomena to motivate the physics. Across both courses, we have created a suite of 54 active-engagement studios, interactive lectures, and assessment questions, all of which have been developed using the findings and best-practices from PER. This suite includes materials for many topics that are important for life science majors, but not part of the traditional introductory physics curriculum, including non-linear stress/strain, diffusion, chemical energy, and life at low Reynolds numbers. Now five years after the first complete implementation, the two-course sequence is running smoothly. In this talk, I will provide an overview of our journey from germination to realization.

AAPT SM 20

A new IPLS course: Five years later

course development

introductory physics

ipls

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. The program featured plenary speakers, sessions, workshops and many special activities.

For more information please visit the 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting page at: https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/SM2020/index.cfm.


The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. 

technical paper

One goal of physics activities may be to develop student skills in designing experiments. Understanding the use of student design tasks can help instructors who want to use research-based approaches to create new activities. In this research, we analyzed student design actions in 66 research-based activities from 11 different curricula to determine the frequency of various design tasks that students were asked to perform. Our definitions of student design tasks were: 1) describing an experimental procedure invented by the student, 2) improving a previous experiment, 3) making a hypothesis, 4) choosing questions to investigate, and 5) designing, stating, inventing, or improving a mathematical or quantitative procedure.

Examining student design tasks in research-based activities

A “conflict thesis”, which claims a methodological, factual, and political conflict between science and religion [1], has led to stereotypes about the low competence of religious people in academic careers, especially in western contexts [2]. People with deeply held religious beliefs are aware of these negative stereotypes about them, which can lower their interest and performance in science [3]. In this study, we draw on survey data to examine the effect of spirituality and religious beliefs on physics identity and career choice.

The Effect of Spirituality and Religiousness on Physics Identity and Career Choice

There are as many ways to go about instructing a lab as there are teaching assistants. What we hope for our TAs to gain as lab instructors is to come into their own identity as teachers and the ability to effectively communicate scientific work. In this presentation, I will discuss material I have implemented to provide TAs the opportunity to practice their teaching skills while also benefiting from their teaching experience. One project was creating an instructor's guide to laboratories written by former TAs. Written as a refresher for TAs who already have familiarity with the laboratory course, the primary goal is to save them time and effort so that they can focus on the matter at hand: helping the students take as much as they can from the course. I will also discuss the use of supplemental videos that allow TAs and students to visualize portions of the lab.

Creating supplemental teaching material for teaching assistants

Compared to pedagogy in formal settings, comparatively little work has been done investigating techniques of pedagogy in informal learning environments. A 2016 study [1] addressed this issue, developing an observation-based model characterizing the pedagogical modes of volunteer instructors in an afterschool informal education program. Following the methodology of that study, we have observed and analyzed instructor pedagogy in a University of Colorado Boulder-based informal physics education program. The result is a model that both corroborates and expands upon the results of the 2016 study, more clearly accounting, e.g., for instructors’ varying objectives in the informal learning environment. We will describe study methodology and results, discuss the expanded model, and address application of the model in other informal learning environments.

A Refined Model for Characterizing Pedagogy in Informal Learning Environments

The Get the Facts Out (GFO) project is a joint effort between four national societies and the Colorado School of Mines to change the conversation around grade 7-12 physics, chemistry, and math teaching careers. We have developed the first ever set of research-based, user-tested STEM teacher recruitment materials. To do this and to better understand best practices around recruiting math and science teachers, GFO has a rigorous research arm. Our research includes the study of both student and faculty perceptions of the teaching profession including development of instruments to measure these. Finally, to measure the effectiveness of the project, we are engaging in a large-scale longitudinal study that includes annual collection of qualitative data from eighteen departments and quantitative data from another 60 departments. Here we will share resource updates and recent highlights of research results. This work is supported by NSF DUE-1821710 & 1821462.

Get the Facts Out: Resource updates and recent research results

Those seeking to change the policies, practices, and cultures of universities to support effective educational practices often find it a challenge. To navigate this work, change efforts are increasingly being focused at the department-level, including two models for departmentally-based change: the Departmental Action Team (DAT) Project and Teaching Quality Framework (TQF) Initiative. In the DAT Project, externally-facilitated working groups, comprised of students, faculty, and staff, pursue collectively-determined projects aimed at improving the undergraduate experience in their department. In the TQF Initiative, externally-facilitated working groups of faculty (modeled on the DAT Project) focus on transforming teaching evaluation practices in their department. To better understand these related models of institutional change, we conducted interviews with individuals from the DAT Project and TQF Initiative, including facilitators and grant PIs. We present results that give insight into outcomes of these models, impacts of differences between the models, and avenues for growth in the models.

Improving education through departmental change: a comparison of approaches

Group work provides valuable opportunities for students to actively participate in classroom conversations. Instructors often emphasize generating and sharing ideas in group work, but how these ideas are shared in small-group discussions can be complicated by social dynamics within that group. In this project, we applied techniques from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to analyze the interpersonal meanings in students’ discourse in a college physics lab section. By examining how students socially positioned themselves in the episode, we found that students steered the group’s conversation not only by explicitly offering ideas, but also by positioning as not-knowing, raising questions, and appealing to authority. This episode provides another example to a growing body of research describing the consequential role of social dynamics in how physics students contribute to small-group discussions.

Examining the Social Dynamics of Small-Group Discussions

Descriptions of the nature of science contrast the view of physics as objective, unaffected by human influence. In order to better understand students’ thinking about the nature of physics, we collected responses to the question, “Do you think physics is objective or subjective?” In this presentation, we compare and contrast the ideas from “Science for All Americans” to students’ ideas about the presence of subjectivity in physics. Students, prior to engaging in conversation about subjectivity, tend to describe physics without reference to human influence. After discussing this question with peers, students acknowledge the individual limitations of human perception and focus in research. We argue that an awareness about the influence of structural and individual subjectivity in classrooms can create a robust scientific community and disrupt the current culture that serves to marginalize groups of people.

Biases, Limitations, and Focus: Student Perspectives on Subjectivity in Physics

At research universities, foundational STEM courses are offered to hundreds or even thousands of students every year. Unfortunately, success in these courses is neither universal nor equitably distributed. Development of such courses and research into their efficacy should be a shared endeavor, yet it often takes place only locally - one discipline and one campus at a time. The Sloan Equity and Inclusion in STEM Introductory Courses project aims to change this. Motivated by a focus on equity, inclusion, and excellence as central goals of the reform process, SEISMIC brings together more than a hundred individuals from ten institutions in a collaborative structure inspired by ‘big science’ research projects. This talk will describe the emergence and early progress of this R&D project, including parallel data analysis, coordinated experimentation, continuous exchange of speakers, and extended annual meetings.

Rethinking Foundational STEM Courses: Pulling Weeds or Growing Deep Roots?

Integrating Computation into Science Across Michigan (ICSAM) is an NSF funded project that focuses on supporting teachers who wish to incorporate computational activities into their physics classroom in an equitable way. Teachers from across Michigan come to MSU for one week during the summer to participate in a hands-on computational workshop. The emphasis of the workshop is to build up teachers' efficacy and ability with computation while also focusing on encouraging the teachers to consider the impact on equity that computation can have in the physics classroom. Teachers design a computational activity that they intend to use in their class while also having access to the array of computational activities designed by the other teachers. The teachers then participate in bi-monthly workdays that the ICSAM team tailor to the challenges and needs of the teachers. In this presentation, we report on the workshop design and impacts of the ICSAM project.

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A new IPLS course: Five years later

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