Conveners
W1-2 Teaching for Physics Skills Development (DPE) | Développement d'aptitudes pour l'enseignement de la physique (DEP)
- Patricia Mitchler
Approaching a question without fear; coming up with an idea; designing an experiment; understanding assumptions; interpreting data; reasoning from evidence. Many physicists would claim they do this for a living, and most would be delighted to observe this behavior in their students, yet for a variety of reasons this is often not what we encourage in our introductory physics labs.
We have...
The Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy at Queen's University has embarked on a journal of transforming its upper year undergraduate lab courses using a backward design strategy. Student learning activities and course assessments have been redeveloped to align with a common set of learning objectives adapted from the recommendations for the Undergraduate Physics Laboratory...
Analyzing, constructing, and translating between graphical, pictorial, and mathematical representations of physics ideas and reasoning flexibly through them is a key characteristic of expertise. Abundant research shows that university physics students at all levels struggle to employ representations consistently and reflectively, but little instruction in physics is explicitly designed with...
It has been recognized that computational skills are essential for the modern physicist, whether as a third “branch” of physics alongside experimental and theoretical, or as a toolset that is fundamental to the work of both theorists and experimentalists. In recognition of this, both the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Physical Society have issued calls for...
