Speaker
Description
Curriculum change within universities is usually slow and incremental. In contrast, Physics Education Research has matured rapidly over the past decades, giving us clear evidence about which pedagogies reliably improve student learning. The gap between what we know and what is routinely implemented in practice is often wide and continues to grow.
PHYSICS 1D03/1E03, the first year mechanics and E&M courses for engineering students at McMaster, present a rare opportunity to help close this gap. Prompted by institutional changes, the department has elected to overhaul these courses completely. Rather than a series of small tweaks, we are rebuilding them from the ground up.
While all course components are changing, lectures and labs anchor the redesign. The new lecture structure emphasizes student exploration and collaborative problem solving in real world engineering contexts. Building on the wealth of active-learning research, we are adopting a Productive Failure model that introduces challenging, meaningful problems early to promote deeper sense making and motivate learning. Meanwhile, the lab program is shifting from prescriptive, confirmatory exercises to inquiry based labs that prioritize experimental technique, decision making, and expert-like habits of mind.
This talk will describe the rationale and process behind the overhaul, including consultations with stakeholders, learning-goal mapping, and the development of materials. The redesigned mechanics course will be piloted in May 2026, and we will report preliminary data on student engagement and learning. The emphasis will be on lessons learned in practice: what worked well, what did not, and what questions we still need to answer before full implementation with 1300 students in the Fall 2026 semester.
| Keyword-1 | Curriculum Change |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | Labs |
| Keyword-3 | Inquiry Based Learning |