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For over 20 years, PER at Illinois has largely focused on leveraging technology and organizational structures to support research-based instruction in our large-enrollment introductory courses. In the past, we have referred to this process as &#39;parallel parking an aircraft carrier.&#39; In response to the Covid-19 pandemic all components of the introductory courses were shifted to an online format. Many of our existing structures to teach physics at scale were transferable to an online setting. Yet, with the loss of physical proximity a new social dimension was added to the &#39;parallel parking&#39; problem: How do we deliberately support engagement, collaboration, and community in our virtual classrooms? This talk describes our journey to incorporate this social dimension into our instruction in the Fall 2020 semester, highlighting the interplay between pedagogy and the affordances and constraints of online educational technologies, and sharing challenges and successes faced along the way.

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Parallel parking an aircraft carrier in space

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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. 

For over 20 years, PER at Illinois has largely focused on leveraging technology and organizational structures to support research-based instruction in our large-enrollment introductory courses. In the past, we have referred to this process as 'parallel parking an aircraft carrier.' In response to the Covid-19 pandemic all components of the introductory courses were shifted to an online format. Many of our existing structures to teach physics at scale were transferable to an online setting. Yet, with the loss of physical proximity a new social dimension was added to the 'parallel parking' problem: How do we deliberately support engagement, collaboration, and community in our virtual classrooms? This talk describes our journey to incorporate this social dimension into our instruction in the Fall 2020 semester, highlighting the interplay between pedagogy and the affordances and constraints of online educational technologies, and sharing challenges and successes faced along the way.

technical paper

AAPT® is a strong professional physics science society dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in physical science education.

Winter and Summer National Meetings:
These National Meetings, held each winter and summer, are opportunities for members, colleagues, and future physicists from around the world to:

- participate in physics workshops
- meet and greet other physics educators
- form networks nationally and locally
- engage exhibitors and learn about the latest physics resources
- discuss innovations in teaching methods
- share the results of research about teaching and learning.

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The PICUP Collection of Exercise Sets (https://www.compadre.org/PICUP/exercises/) contains over 60 peer-reviewed computation-infused activities for use in various physics courses from high school through graduate study. Each Exercise Set includes an instructor guide, student-facing exercises, and sample implementations for one or more programming platforms. I present an analysis of this collection based on Exercise Set traits such as course context, assignment topic, computational methods employed, course level, programming platforms, word count, and expected completion time. This analysis will highlight the strengths of the PICUP Collection (such as topics and programming platforms that are well represented) and where there is ample room for development (such as topics not yet covered and programming platforms currently underutilized).

Analysis of the PICUP Collection: Strengths and Areas for Development

For many years, I and my colleagues have used a variety of online tools in support of teaching large enrollment, introductory courses at an urban, public university. With the onset of COVID-19, the roles of these tools have changed dramatically. In addition to the LMS, we have used personal response systems, an online discussion forum, an online homework system, computational methods in Excel, and online simulations for years. We continue to use all of these and have added zoom and video recording of lectures to the mix. In this talk, I will focus on the differences between the present situation and the pre-pandemic world. How has our use of technology and our students’ responses to it changed? What can we learn about the value of technology and best practices for its use by observing these changes?

Supporting Students with Technology During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In our physics discipline’s continual effort to integrate computational problem solving into all levels of our curriculum, videos and accompanying documents were created to help new users learn the computer algebraic and numeric system Maple(tm). Undergraduates are expected to solve computationally based problems each week in their courses. &nbsp; Based upon recommendations from research in the field of educational, each video possesses the following attributes: * a length of twelve minutes or less, * the inclusion of intentional pauses, *&nbsp;a limit of three major concepts, *&nbsp;minimal amount of syntax and functions, *&nbsp;integration of practice&nbsp;/ example physics problems, * a&nbsp;section on troubleshooting, This talk will cover the challenges and successes of 1) designing and generating the videos, 2) the implementation of the desired attributes into each video, and 3) the assessment by new users in introductory and upper division undergraduate physics courses. &nbsp;

Design, Construction and Use of Instructional Videos on using Maple™

Scientific literacy is now an important topic for the global society dealing with issues such as pandemics, climate change, etc. At most post-secondary institutions non-science majors outnumber declared science majors. However, it is argued that non-science major students and classes may be more important to the scientific culture of a given institution than declared science majors. So how do we nurture scientific literacy in all students? The focus of the Physical Science department (Physics, Chemistry, Geology) at EMCC is a student-centered inquiry-based approach where students gain the skills necessary to be successful in their chosen fields. The geology courses are typically 95% non-STEM majors. Geology classes made science content accessible to non-science majors and the skills associated with scientific investigation can be applied to any chosen career path. The skills I want my student to gain or grow include, critical thinking, problem solving, group dynamics, public speaking, and scientific literacy.

How Non-Science Majors Can Change Science Culture of Post-Secondary Institutions

Knowledge about scientific inquiry and the Nature of Science (NOS) is deemed an important part of students’ education in the USA as well as in Europe and China (OECD, 2016). We have conducted a field study to explore the development of lower high school students’ views about NOS during one school year in the region of Hesse, Germany. We found that often students do not achieve an adequate perception of how creativity and empirical evidence are entwined in scientific inquiry. This is hardly surprising, as preservice teachers already feel ill-prepared to convey scientific inquiry in the classroom. Therefore, we have taken first steps towards implementing a NOS module in the newly created “networking area”, a highly innovative enrichment of the teacher training program at TU Darmstadt allowing&nbsp;for STEAM approaches. The talk will give an insight into our research findings, describe initial experiences with the NOS module and “networking area”.

Creativity and Empirical Evidence: A STEAM Approach Towards Scientific Inquiry

Science is supposed to create solutions to the problems our world is facing, and we do a lot to foster scientific knowledge with out students towards this end. But how might we teach to be "creative" and put solutions together using the building blocks of Math, Science, Technology and Engineering? Internationally, there is a growing movement to re-focus on the idea of the&nbsp;STEAM Curriculum that is driven&nbsp;from the Maker Movement, the Ardiuno Community and educators of the Asia-Pacific area that understands the "A" for "Arts" as a mission to design and create artificats with the needs of human beings at the center. We demonstrate creativity methods such as Design Thinking, Human-Centric Design and Lean Start-up and how they can be integrated with inquiry&nbsp;learning in classrooms. We will compare STEAM teaching to ISLE and 5E teaching methods and compare the differences from the perspective of students. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Making Creativity Teachable: What the "A"in STEAM really stands for.

In spring 2020, campuses across the world had to adpat its teaching practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) decided to switch all teaching to remote or online teaching with very little notice. During the summer of 2020 NEIU decided that most of the courses would continue this practice, with a few exceptions. Having the summer to prepare, I decided to teach Mechanics I and Modern Physics I using a flipped classroom approach. Lectures are recorded ahead of time using Zoom and the built-in whiteboard for problem solving. Before the lecture a Just-in-Time WarmUp quiz is administered and the results are used fo rthe initial discussion in the scheduled virtual lecture. After the discussion, students move into Zoom breakout rooms for group work on problem solving and conceptual discussions. I will present the successes and challenges of this approach on a Urban campus.&nbsp;

Flipped Virtual Lectures on a Urban Campus

A full-featured AV setup for a lightboard lecture capture system is presented that adds new features and at a dramatically-lower cost (using a Raspberry Pi,&nbsp;an HDMI switcher, and a Stream Deck macro keyboard). A teacher can, for instance, annotate transparent Power Point slides. Similar techniques can be adapted to capture screencasts that are more engaging without the need for post-production work.&nbsp;

Immediacy by Design: Light Boarding, Streaming, and Recording Engaging Assets

Physics models matter and its interactions in a world with three spatial dimensions.&nbsp;&nbsp; It helps our understanding if we can visualize the predictions of a model.&nbsp; This is particular important for introductory physics courses.&nbsp; For some system three-dimensional visual representations can give us a better understanding of the behavior of the system than two-dimensional representations.. We are developing 3D interactive animations that run in any modern browser.&nbsp; No special plug-ins are needed.&nbsp; (http://labman.phys.utk.edu/3D%20Physics/) In particular, we are developing tools for optics laboratories.&nbsp; Students are be able to move components on an optical breadboard, align the components, trace a He-Ne laser beam through the system and make measurement.&nbsp; (http://labman.phys.utk.edu/3D%20Physics/optics.html) These tools already form the basis for several online introductory physics laboratories.

3d Physics Apps

Desmos is a surprisingly powerful web-based graphing calculator. I present a quick sample of my Desmos visualizations that I created for my introductory and intermediate physics courses. The URLs to these visualizations will be made available. One nice feature of Desmos is that the end user can look inside to see how things were done. I begin with the visualization of functions (from kinematics,&nbsp;traveling waves, and electric potentials), with parameters controlled by sliders. I then show 2D-visualizations of equipotentials and of wave-interference using implicit functions in Desmos. (Details of the wave-interference visualization will be described in a related poster.) I next briefly describe some geometric visualizations of spacetime diagrams and differential forms (dual vectors) that I use to teach relativity. I conclude with a&nbsp;visualization of the Dirac Delta Function as a sequence of definite-integrals in Desmos. &nbsp;

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