Conveners
T4-10 Thinking Outside the Box (DPE) | Penser hors de la boîte (DEP)
- Martin Williams (University of Guelph)
In this talk, I will review my experience working with students at Queen's University to develop an open access textbook aimed at introductory calculus-based physics. In particular, I will discuss how we worked towards designing a text that is better adapted for the flipped classroom approach than current offerings, and how we managed the process of developing the text. While experimental...
We introduce ComPAIR, an open source, peer feedback and teaching technology developed at UBC that provides students a safe, flexible environment to develop the skill of evaluating another person’s work, and in turn, receive evaluations from their peers. We highlight its usage in a 300 level physics class.
The effectiveness of peer feedback can be limited by the relative newness of students...
In a series of experiments designed to engage students in reflective thinking in exam-like situations, we test the effectiveness of two different interventions in improving student performance on specific short-answer questions. These interventions (1) ask students to explain their answer after answering a short-answer question, or (2) pair questions together for concepts that students...
Gauss’s Law is one of the most elegant and powerful relationships in physics, but should it be taught in first year? On the one hand, it provides the framework to truly understand electric fields, is an entry point to Maxwell’s equations, and enables a beautiful introduction to important ideas of flux and symmetry. On the other hand, in first year students will not have the vector calculus...
When teaching the law of conservation of linear momentum to first-year university or senior high school students, it is quite popular to use the term "isolated system" to describe the condition of the conservation law. That is, the law of conservation of momentum is stated as that the momentum of an isolated system is constant. Our investigation suggests that the term isolated system, though...
