Educational innovation and outreach in the Department of Physics and Astronomy
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Transcript of Educational innovation and outreach in the Department of Physics and Astronomy
Educational innovation and outreach in the Department of Physics and Astronomy
Outreach:
• REU - Research experience for undergraduates
• LLE summer program for high school students
• PREP - Pre-college Experience in Physics for 9th and 10th grade women
• PARTICLE - HS classroom outreach
Innovation:
• Inquiry
• Workshops
• Preflights
Teaching/training:
• TI program
• Certificate in college teaching
• TI/TA training
Frank Wolfs
Frank Wolfs
Overview of PARTICLEKevin McFarland
• Methods:– Summer Teacher Institute
• Particle Physics, Cosmic Rays, Other Modern Physics Topics, Pedagogy
• Construct Classroom Equipment
– Classroom Outreach• Visits by Physicists to Classrooms
• Research Support
– “PARTICLE day” student conference
Focal Point: CosmicRay Telescope
• Primary “hook” is the cosmic ray telescope for the classroom– Easy to build– About $400/unit
Classroom visits
Particle day
Student projects/research and presentations
PREP Pre-College Experience in Physics for Women
2 week summer program for 20-30 9th and 10th grade women
Guest speakers, inquiry labs and discussions
Content-based grant funding
Planned and run by 2 women undergraduate science majors
Workshops in physics
Cline, Manly, McFarland, Wu, Tipton (P113, P114, P121, P122)
Very successful by multiple measures
• Assessment
• Continued module development, cross-disciplinary
• Toy chest
• Use of online applets and/or research within module
Preflights
Just-in-time-teaching
U Illinois server, moving to webwork this summer
Will use in P122 and P113 this fall
• Give reading assignment at end of previous class
• Ask students to do online quiz about the assignment
• Look at results of quiz before lecture and modify lecture and incorporate statistics on quiz results
McFarland, used in P122
Teaching and Training
Teaching Intern program - 20 undergraduate TI’s, work in labs (along with graduate student) and workshops
Weekly teaching seminar during fall
In addition workshop leaders must attend weekly leader meeting
Intense 2-day TA/TI training at end of August (physics & other depts) - talks, video taping
Teaching certificate - talented and interested TA’s teach major summer courses - good for students, good for dept.
Plans/vision/fantasy
PARTICLE program - maybe an avenue through which others might get involved with local HS outreach
Will continue to play with workshops, preflights, physics on the road, projects, etc.
Assessment: Workshops, preflights, other things
High school physics workshops?
Spread the word to other research physics departments
Open to deeper physics/Warner ties. Encourage use of physics courses as physics/Warner laboratory for interested Warner folk. Internally exploring possibility of physics Ph.D. with
concentration in physics education.
Have a unique? core of interested folk cutting across departments, LAS, Warner. WTF is an example. Perhaps this gives us an opportunity to study/assess innovation in science/engineering/math education in a way most others
cannot.
Plans/vision/fantasy