United States

We present the improvements made to the teaching methodology for a required advanced electronics lab course for physics and astronomy majors at UNC-CH. The course had the reputation of being most challenging for our majors, leading to depleted student morale, and even losing physics majors. The primary concern was that students were focusing too much time and attention on the equipment and mechanics of the labs at the cost of understanding the underlying electronics principles. Our course changes include (1) updating the traditional lab format to worksheets to be completed in small groups, (2) including more circuit simulations and coding to foster conceptual understanding, and (3) dedicating time in each lab for mini-lectures to reinforce or introduce ideas that were missed in the lecture portion of the course. We present results from these changes to teaching practices and the benefits that we have achieved.

AAPT SM 21

Improving Teaching Methodology for an Electronics Lab Course

best practices

teaching methodology

advanced lab

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.


AAPT SM 20

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

Join AAPT and Physics Educators worldwide in developing and strengthening your professional connections by attending the 2021 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting. AAPT meetings are a great way to reflect on your teaching, recommit to best practices and re-energize your career with new research, products, and techniques.

Listen to internationally known plenary speakers, attend sessions, workshops, and special activities. Attending the virtual summer meeting is an excellent opportunity to share your expertise and learn from and network with leaders in the field.

Please log in with your AAPT account or register for the event if you haven't already.

If you are registered please note that you need to be logged in with your AAPT email / credentials in order to get access.

The increase of textbook cost is a contributing factor in achievement gap. With the dissemination of open-source resources and utilizing online simulations it is possible to produce free customized learning tools for the students. Furthermore, online simulations give students perfect opportunity to further their studies, observe real-life application of Physics and check the answers of some model problems presented. At the Middlesex County College, using an OER grant, we completed an open-source workbook for the algebra based General Education Physics-I that has been used in classroom and for homework. Although there is an open-source textbook in College Physics by Open STAX, we have been relying on publisher's lecture slides. For the next step, we would like to compile original lecture slides that incorporates online simulations and workbook problems in parallel with the Open textbook. In this talk, open-source workbook, current work on slides, techniques for integrating the simulations and the challenges are presented.

Combining OER Resources with Online Simulations to Reduce Achievement Gap

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of US colleges and universities chose to continue teaching and rapidly switched to a new mode of instruction that we call Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). As ERT is different from traditional online learning in scope and intention, it is important to understand student experiences with ERT to better inform ERT instruction (and potentially more traditional instruction as well). Student experiences with ERT cannot be separated from the social and political strife that accompanied it (especially in the US), nor can they be separated from systems of oppression that discriminate based on gender, race, ability, and other factors. In this talk, we explore differential experiences with and impacts of ERT across more than 1700 students enrolled in college and university physics courses in the US in the Fall of 2020.

Students' Differential Experiences with Emergency Remote Teaching in Fall 2020

In this talk I will present a blueprint for decolonizing the classroom. Rather than adhering to the traditional classroom, we create an anti-hierarchical collective where the
most marginalized voices are prioritized. To achieve this, we implement the following key pillars: Justice education as one of the main ingredients in the curriculum. Community town halls to address and improve the classroom climate. (3) Accountability systems through regular (anonymous) surveys collected and evaluated by an
external paid expert. Community building events to build trust as a cornerstone for accountability and mutual solidarity. Adecolonizing physics and astronomy
symposium at the end of the semester, where the collective has an opportunity to share the lessons learned with the broader community. These methods are inspired by
Zapatismo (Chiapas, Mexico) and implemented at Pomona College, a selective liberal arts college in the United States.

Decolonizing the Physics and Astronomy Classroom

In the Fall 2020 semester, the Learning Assistant and instructor for the online general education astronomy course collaborated on instructional material development.
Through activities that incorporated creativity, the arts, current events, and diverse representation, we were better able to support the course’s learning objectives and
outcomes as well as promote the mission and values of our institution. Activities included students creating and naming constellations and exoplanets of their own,
facilitating discussions from scientists of color in TED talks, influencing feedback from the LA’s poetry about astronomy and life, and reflecting on how science connects to society, culture and people. Just as creativity can serve as a bridge between science, self-reflection and expression, LAs serve as a bridge between instructors and
students and bring complimentary experience and expertise to the learning space. This work highlights how LA-instructor collaboration can benefit classroom effectiveness, student engagement and student success

Creative Astronomy: Broadening the scope of an course in Astronomy

NASA’s Artemis program represents a bold vision that will lead humanity forward to the Moon and prepare us for the next giant leap: human exploration of Mars. Through Artemis, with help from commercial and international partners, NASA will develop core capabilities at the Moon, incrementally working toward a sustained lunar presence and validating capabilities for human missions to Mars. Artemis will leverage Commercial Lunar Payload Services to deliver assets to the Moon, Space Launch System and Orion to launch crews to the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO), Human Landing System to transfer the crew between NRHO and the lunar surface, and Gateway to enable sustainable operations. After establishing these capabilities, NASA will continue working with commercial and international partners to establish the Artemis Base Camp near the lunar South Pole. With operational confidence gained from long-term lunar surface missions, humanity will be ready to send humans to the Red Planet.

NASA's Artemis Program

The Artemis missions to the Moon are setting the technical and operational stage for the first human missions to Mars as early as the 2030s. These future missions will require the successful transportation of crew, life support systems, and hardware across millions of miles of planetary distance. Furthermore, the propellant mass that is required to deploy hardware and infrastructure from Earth in support of crewed Mars missions is sensitive to the relative planetary alignments between the two planets. The favorable planetary alignment between Earth and Mars (known as opposition) occurs every 26 months, and the most favorable opposition opportunity occurs every 15 years (known as a synodic period). This presentation will discuss how the orbital mechanics between Earth and Mars strongly influence the many aspects of planning human missions to Mars, including transportation of crew, hardware and surface infrastructure, as well communication between Earth and Mars.

Physical and Technical Challenges for Human Missions to Mars

The NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contract is continuation of the agency's strategy to rely on commercial companies to enable space exploration. Following the path already started with Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew services for the International Space Station, CLPS is working with both small and large American companies to deliver NASA payloads to the surface of the Moon. Since no commercial company has landed on the Moon yet, this approach entails interesting approaches towards contracting for services and managing risk. To date, NASA has tasked 4 companies with delivering 6 sets of NASA payloads to the Moon with the first deliveries scheduled for late 2021.

Using Commercial services to get to the Moon

Stop Saying “Zero Gravity”?

The term “zero gravity” first appeared in NASA’s technical bulletins in 1968. Since then “zero g” has become extremely common in popular usage. We also often hear talk of astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) being weightless or experiencing zero gravity. I present here preliminary results of a survey conducted on social media of college students in the U.S who have taken a physics course in high school or college. Participants were asked about their familiarity with “zero g” or “zero gravity” and also if they thought that astronauts float because of zero gravity. The results show that a very high percentage of students surveyed are aware of the term. Significant numbers among them think that astronauts float due to the absence of gravity, a belief that does not appear to be based on a conceptual understanding of free fall/circular motion and scientific reasoning.


Stop Saying “Zero Gravity”?

Decision based learning (DBL) is a heavily scaffolded constructionist methodology. It guides students through complex cognitive tasks using a decision tree developed from expert approaches to problem solving. DBL was used to teach conceptional Newtonian mechanics in an online, on-demand, general education science course. This talk will introduce the methodology, explain why it was chosen to provide instructional framework for conceptional Newtonian mechanics, and provide results on the effectiveness of a pilot trial of the technique.

Decision Based Learning in Conceptual Newtonian Mechanics

Inquiry-based physics labs often include a focus on collecting and analyzing scientific data. During the process of making sense of the data, students often engage in data cleaning, even if not explicitly instructed to. Data cleaning is the process of identifying and mitigating instances in the data that are misaligned with expectations or hypotheses of the experiment, often due to equipment or software bugs. Our research analyzes think-aloud interviews from thirteen students and observational data in a first-semester, undergraduate IPLS lab. Qualitative coding focused on students’ decision-making processes while engaging in data cleaning in a think-aloud interview setting and in observation data of students working in lab. Results show that students typically follow a process of noticing an anomaly, reasoning about its cause, and then either keeping or discarding the anomaly. However, nuances in this pattern differed in the lab environment as teaching and learning assistants had a significant impact on students’ methods of data cleaning. Although determining the source of outliers in data is complicated, unpacking students’ decision-making process is important for lab instructors to better support students in learning how to work with and interpret data.

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