PIRT Guide to Pedagogical Resources
Research tested Resources for the Large Lecture – much of the research on Physics Education points to the importance of moving the students from a passive state to active engagement. The resources in this section have been developed to accomplish just that in the large lecture.
- Peer Instruction , developed by Eric Mazur at Harvard University. His collection of ConcepTests is available at Project Galileo . We also will provide our instructors upon request Mazur’s book on Peer Instruction and it’s accompanying resource CD (with the ConcepTests ) on long term loan. This material is very compatible with the CPS student response system and can be used in conjunction with demonstrations. With the library of ConcepTests provided, this method is made easy to adopt. Mazur reports that students make significant gains in conceptual understanding over students in traditionally taught lectures and gain comparable problem solving skills.
- Interactive Lecture Demonstrations, developed by David Sokoloff at the University of Oregon and Ronald Thornton at Tufts University. Demonstrations are done using an eight step procedure designed to engage students in the learning process and so convert the commonly passive lecture environment to a more active one. They report significant gains in student conceptual understanding over traditional instruction. We will provide their book on long term loan upon request to our instructors. It has a 13 page general introduction and a collection of ILDs covering a broad range of topics, most of which we should be able to provide. We may need more advance notice than usual as some of these will be new to us.
- Phet - A collection of research-based web simulations from the Physics Education Technology project at the University of Colorado. A paper describing the project is found here.
- CPS – ASU has centralized support working directly with instructors to assist their use of this student response “clicker” system and has a web page explaining how to get assistance here. CPS is useable in any of our large lecture halls, not just those listed. CPS can be used to enhance active learning in the large lecture in a variety of ways.
Other Resources
AIP Center for History of Physics
ASU Modeling Instruction Program
Just-In-Time-Teaching
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations from the University of Maryland Physics Education Research Group
Lecture-Based Methods – Chapter 7 from Teaching Physics with the Physics Suite by Edward Redish, University of Maryland – Valuable information on large lecture techniques
MERLOT Physics Portal – Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
Music Acoustics from the University of New South Wales
Open Source Physics
Physics of Sports Bibliography by Richard Berg, University of Maryland
Research-Based Reform of University Physics - reviews in PER
Why having a theory of learning changes what I do in class on Monday: Helping students build physical intuition – Edward Redish presentation
Textbook Publisher Resources
Addison Wesley Instructor Resource Center – Instructors Register for access to text specific resources
College Physics, 2/e; Giambattista, Richardson, Richardson, c 2007, McGraw-Hill – online site
University Physics with Modern Physics, 11th Ed, Young & Freedman, Addison Wesley-online site
Questions
Assessing-to-Learn Questions Database
Canadian In-Class Question Database
Context Rich Problems for group problem solving – discussion from Univ. of Minnesota, link to archive
The Physics Question of the Week from Richard Berg at the University of Maryland
Thermal Physics Questions from the University of Sydney
Simulation Applets & Videos
AcitvPhysics OnLine – Addison Wesley
Cool Cosmos[Infrared]
Demo video’s from Harvey Mudd Math Demo lab
Dmoz open directory project
EINSTEIN LIGHT multimedia from the University of New South Wales
First Semester Physlets from Boston University
Flash Physics
Football Physics from the University of Nebraska (video)
Iona Physics Demonstrations – Applets & videos
The Light Cone: an illuminating introduction to relativity
LTU Physlets site
Minds on Physics Simulations – John Clement
MIT TEAL visualizations – Electricity & Magnetism
Molecular Expressions E & M
Molecular Expressions Optics
Phet
PHYSCLIPS multimedia from the University of New South Wales
Physics 2000 – Modern Physics
Physics Instructional Software from R.Tarara, St. Mary’s College
Physlets (Java1.1) from Davidson College
Prelab Physlets from Boston University
Reference Frame Applet – Where to Where (might have to click the begin window twice)
Science Simulations - John Clements useful list
Tools for Scientific Thinking Motion Applets – John Clement
University of Oregon Physics Applets – has elemental spectra periodic table
Visual Quantum Mechanics (not the original which is only on commercial CD ROM)
Utilities