tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51587406597160176652023-11-16T03:38:09.877-07:00Steve Koch TeachingI'll post my thoughts about teaching and education on this blog. In 2006, I started teaching at U. New Mexico and have so far taught Physics 102 (conceptual physics / physics w/o math) and Physics 307L (Junior Lab / modern physics). I have pretty much no training in teaching or education and only recently started to realize the resources available in terms of education research.Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-49190749573259576172011-09-13T02:15:00.000-06:002011-09-13T02:15:51.004-06:00Biophysics Seminar: ArchaeaThis week, we held our biophysics seminar early because I have to fly out to Santa Cruz on Wednesday to meet some potential open science collaborators--something I'm really excited about and will hopefully have good news to report on my other blog next week. The two students in the course, Peter Relich and Godwin Amo-Kwao are excellent students and opted to hold the class early instead of postponing until next week. I was really glad they chose to do so--it showed that they care about the class and are learning from our meetings.<br />
<div><br />
</div><div>We had decided last week to use this meeting to learn about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea">Archaea</a> by reading two items:</div><div><div><ul><li>Wikipedia article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea">Archaea</a>. </li>
<li>Iddo Friedberg's recent fascinating blog entry, "<a href="http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2011/03/16/why-are-there-no-disease-causing-archaea/">Why are there no (or almost no) disease-causing Archaea?</a>" </li>
</ul><div>I spent about 3 hours myself re-reading these articles and venturing off to learn more about topics brought up in the articles. I also read most of the article that Iddo was responding to: "<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bies.201000091">The proportional lack of archaeal pathogens: Do viruses/phages hold the key?</a>" Since hearing about Archaea ten or fifteen years ago, I've always found them fascinating, but never have learned much about them. After just 3 hours of reading and our hour of discussion, I still don't know much, but am still in love with them.</div></div></div><div><br />
</div><div>I figured we'd have plenty to explore since none of the three of us knew very much coming in, and I was right. I enjoy the format of our course--the students brought up what they found most interesting, and we'd Google & Wikipedia on the projector to find out more about what we were talking about. Similar to what I'd do on my own "wasting time" learning about subjects not directly relevant to my research, but in this case, with an extra excuse that it counts as teaching :)</div><div><br />
</div><div>We also have an ongoing goal of making contributions publicly from our class, but it remains a challenge, since we don't have video recording and most of what we do is talk and browse articles online. I've encouraged the students to individually leave comments on Iddo's blog, but at the time we couldn't find the commenting feature enabled. So, for now, I'll just list a few fun things I learned and / or knowledge I was able to share with the students:</div><div><br />
</div><div><ul><li>I didn't know before today that Archaea use as their primary membrane component a kind of lipid different from that used in Bacteria and Eukaryotes. They use glycerol-ether lipids instead of glycerol-ester lipids. This may make their membranes more resistant to extreme pH and temperatures, according to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea">wikipedia entry</a>.</li>
<li>I learned that Archaea live in many parts of the human body, such as the gut. Much of what is known about Archaea is about these methanogens, which are useful in industry for sewage treatment, biogas production and other purposes. This is interesting to me for at least two reasons. First, because I still hold the misconception that Archaea exist primarily in extreme environments. This is what I first learned a decade or so ago, but it seems they exist everywhere and maybe most of them are not in extreme environments (though they certainly live there too--like hot springs, deep sea vents, highly salty water, etc.). Second, it's interesting that Archaea thrive in our body but as Iddo and the research article talk about, we don't know of any pathogenic Archaea.</li>
<li>Peter pointed out in our discussion that the articles have good hypotheses for non-existence of pathogenic Archaea, but he's not thoroughly convinced. Even though I know very little, I agree with him. We wondered whether a place to look for pathogenic Archaea may be in more "extreme" or unusual human populations. There wasn't any detailed reasoning for wondering this, aside from the fact that there are some amazing extremophiles in the Archaea domain. If there are pathogenic Archaea, would they be more likely in more extreme environments? For example, in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Mazandaran">Ramsar, Iran</a>, where the natural background radiation is 200 times higher than the global average? Like I said, there's no sound reasoning for wondering this, but it lead to fun discussion.</li>
<li>While thinking about environments and extremophiles, a question came up: Currently, which domain of life has ventured farthest from Earth? Archaea was our guess since they seem to be the extremest extremophiles. We did a Google search for "archaea on the moon" and I was really surprised that there are zero hits. We realize there is no atmosphere on the moon, but how preposterous is it that some Archaea from astronaut's boots were trampled into the soil and aren't yet dead? "Archaea on the moon" should get at least one Google hit, right? Well, more realistic is probably the possibility of Archaea on Mars. As Peter pointed out, they seem to live everywhere, and we've possibly already contaminated Mars with the rover. Since we can't culture the putative Archaea here on Earth, it will probably be tough to know where they came from if we do discover them on Mars. Like I pointed out above, our discussion group doesn't know much about the subject, but from what we know, it seems possible.</li>
<li>Our discussion was entertaining and educational. It led us to discuss some topics more likely to come up in our own biophysics research such as RNA polymerase, DNA polymerase, and DNA damage repair. We went about 20 minutes overtime and I could have gone on for hours.</li>
</ul><div>For next week, we're going to read a couple papers about stochastic simulation--a more focused topic, and one definitely important for the research of all three of us. The papers are:</div></div><div><ul><li>Gillespie, D. T. (2007). Stochastic simulation of chemical kinetics. <i>Annual review of physical chemistry</i>, <i>58</i>, 35-55. doi:10.1146/annurev.physchem.58.032806.104637</li>
<li><div style="margin-left: 24pt; text-indent: -24.0pt;">Voter, A. F. (2005). Introduction to the Kinetic Monte Carlo Method. <i>Radiation Effects</i>.</div><div style="margin-left: 24pt; text-indent: -24.0pt;"></div></li>
</ul></div>I learned about these paper a few years ago when we began using stochastic simulation in our lab to study kinesin (see "<a href="http://precedings.nature.com/documents/5038/version/1">A discrete-state model for kinesin-1 with neck linker tension</a>"). I had been using stochastic simulation for years before that, as a very useful tool in the lab. But I wasn't aware of the seminal work of Gillespie until I read an excellent paper on transcription out of the Kornberg lab, which pointed to Gillespie's 1977 paper: Gillespie, D. T. (1977). Exact stochastic simulation of coupled chemical reactions. <i>The Journal of Physical Chemistry</i>, <i>81</i>(25), 2340-2361. doi:10.1021/j100540a008Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-17034726052015008022011-09-09T15:08:00.000-06:002011-09-09T15:08:38.676-06:00Biophysics Seminar SeriesThis semester, in addition to Junior Lab, I am leading a one-credit biophysics seminar. There are two biophysics graduate students enrolled. Peter Relich is a 2nd year biophysics student, working in the Keith Lidke lab on (I think) super-resolution microscopy and hyperspectral imaging of live cells (in collaboration with the Diane Lidke lab). Godwin Amo-Kwao is finishing his maters thesis in Physics, working on quantum mechanical calculations of amino acids to be used as a basis set for the charge-transfer (CT) force field for molecular dynamics in the Susan Atlas lab. He is also beginning as a Ph.D. student in UNM's Nanoscience and Microsystems (NSMS) program.<br />
<br />
So far, the course has been a lot of fun. I like the small group as we can easily have discussions with everyone participating. Our general plan for the course is to learn some biophysics while also learning about open science and modern tools that researchers can use in their research. A mindmap of our initial thoughts is here: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: #eff1f2; color: #5b636b; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><a class="underline" href="http://www.mindmeister.com/106137967/2011-phyc-500" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; color: #3390e6; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">http://www.mindmeister.com/106137967/2011-phyc-500</a></span><br />
<br />
We want to carry out the course as openly as possible, but we don't have a great way of doing that. Especially since our meetings are face to face and we are not setup for video recording or anything like that. But when we do have a chance to contribute openly, we are going to. For example, when we read PLoS papers, we intend to rate them and leave comments, either as a group or individually.<br />
<br />
For this week, we read two classic papers by Gilbert Lewis about the effects of heavy water (D2O) on living organisms. These papers are:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div><ul><li>1. Lewis, G. N. (1933). The biochemistry of water containing hydrogen isotope. <i>Journal of the American Chemical Society</i>, <i>55</i>(8), 3503–3504. American Chemical Society. doi:10.1021/ja01335a509</li>
<li>2. Lewis, G. N. (1934). THE BIOLOGY OF HEAVY WATER. <i>Science (New York, N.Y.)</i>, <i>79</i>(2042), 151-153. doi:10.1126/science.79.2042.151</li>
</ul><div>Both are easy read, fascinating, and in my opinion ground-breaking at the time. We had a good time discussing the papers. Much of the time we spent doing google searches for deuterium-depleted water, and wondering at the prevalence of companies selling deuterium-depleted water (DDW) as a cure for cancer and other health benefits. I was really surprised that one company recommends that everyone should drink only DDW for two months out of every year! Obviously there should be some fundamental research supporting this extreme recommendation. In my own lab, we've begun DDW studies on tobacco seeds, for the first time (that I know of) carrying out the research that Lewis proposed in the 1934 Science paper. Our work is open notebook science and can be viewed on <a href="http://research.iheartanthony.com/">Anthony Salvagno's blog</a>. Certainly, basic research such as this is required to support any future therapies based on DDW.</div></div><div><br />
</div><div>In order to contribute a little bit publicly from our discussion, we used PaperCritic to leave feedback on the articles. These entries are:</div><div><ul><li>Lewis 1934 Science paper: <a href="http://www.papercritic.com/mendeley-pub/0a6493d0-6d02-11df-afb8-0026b95d30b2">http://www.papercritic.com/mendeley-pub/0a6493d0-6d02-11df-afb8-0026b95d30b2</a></li>
<li>Lewis 1933 JACS paper: <a href="http://www.papercritic.com/mendeley-pub/241ddab0-6d03-11df-936c-0026b95e484c">http://www.papercritic.com/mendeley-pub/241ddab0-6d03-11df-936c-0026b95e484c</a></li>
</ul><div>PaperCritic plugs into Mendeley, but has some significant bugs still. For example, I cannot figure out how to edit the reviews after we submitted them. So, on the second review linked above, I could not give credit to Peter and Godwin.</div><div><br />
</div><div>For next week, we are reading two items, to learn more about fascinating Archaea:</div><div><ul><li>Wikipedia article on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaea">Archaea</a>. I am encouraging me and the two students to improve the article if we see opportunities.</li>
<li>Iddo Friedberg's recent fascinating blog entry, "<a href="http://bytesizebio.net/index.php/2011/03/16/why-are-there-no-disease-causing-archaea/">Why are there no (or almost no) disease-causing Archaea?</a>" We plan to leave a comment on his blog after our discussion.</li>
</ul><div><br />
</div></div></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-8648797139675195912011-08-31T16:44:00.000-06:002011-08-31T16:44:56.576-06:00Junior Lab Brainstorming Exercise: Good scienceLast year (<a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L:Schedule/Week_2_agenda/Small_group_exercise">August 2010</a>) and this year (<a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L:Schedule/Week_2_agenda/Small_group_exercise2011">August 2011</a>), I have led a brainstorming exercise in Junior Lab lecture. I believe Katie Richardson (aka Karma) may have had the idea for this exercise when she was TA last year. The exercise has two main goals:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Learn something about what makes "good" science</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Get used to talking and contributing to class discussions</span></li>
</ul><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">As you can see from the links to the brainstorming pages (above), these goals are clearly stated to the students, and they seem to embrace them. The students quickly formed groups and there was a lot of discussion. The students texted or emailed their brainstorming results to me, and I collected the data on the page. Then there was about 10-15 minutes for students to volunteer to nominate items as most important. The students also gave pitches in support of their favorite items. Following this, there were two rounds of voting, with students voting for 0, 1, or 2 items each time. In both years, "reproducibility" won the contest, something which makes me very optimistic about these early-career scientists! Of course not all of them will continue on in science, but I would say an understanding of good science will be important for all of them, no matter what their career.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Here are the items that made the final round of voting for 2010 and 2011. The first number is the votes from first round, the second is the second round:</span></span></div><div><ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">2010</span></span></li>
<ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Reproducibility 11, 15</span></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Objective / aware of biases -- so the work is actually useful 7, 9</span></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Creativity -- ask creative questions that are relevant and answer them in creative ways 6, 10</span></span></li>
</ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">2011</span></span></li>
<ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Verification by peers 4, 6</span></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Reproducibility (detailed procedures) 12, 15</span></span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Objectivity, unbiased 5, 4</span></span></li>
</ul></ul></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-269265375178928832010-09-14T12:24:00.002-06:002010-09-14T15:56:49.054-06:00Week 4 Lecture, Law of Large Numbers, Intro to Central Limit Theorem and Related Terminology<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Yesterday was the <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L:Schedule/Week_4_agenda">4th week of Junior Lab</a>, and the third lecture (no class Labor Day week). We started discussing some of the fundamentals that underlie a lot of data analysis. To do so, we started with a <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L:Schedule/Week_4_agenda/Coin_Toss">group exercise that involved flipping coins and recording the number of heads and tails</a>. One of the main goals of the group exercise was to get students involved and contributing to the discussion. In my opinion, that goal was successful. Out of 16 students, I can recall at least six students who were actively contributing to the discussion for the whole hour. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>The other goal was to use the coin flip as a launching point to discuss <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution">probability distributions</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_mass_function">probability functions</a>, parent distributions, the <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FLaw_of_large_numbers&rct=j&q=law%20of%20large%20numbers&ei=K7OPTIPVC4qosAOv9qyxDg&usg=AFQjCNGHpUx5hKQpvGv0_O1LtBkHK_2Wtg&sig2=Kx8fxo1WxOdGv5AYqMrTDA&cad=rja">law of large numbers</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCentral_limit_theorem&rct=j&q=central%20limit%20theorem&ei=OLOPTMOmFJKosQOqnoiyDg&usg=AFQjCNHMyxsyPUCBYLswma9_nWQo_2mvxw&sig2=Jk8HAy19F2FigSD_p4woLQ&cad=rja">central limit theorem(s)</a>, independent measurements, random error, systematic error, etc. I think this goal was achieved as well. Below are two photos of the chalkboard, following our 30 or 40 minute discussion. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgooKFGOouMjAhZUE5xhtu3mbt4X3rOFyaCAjmymcNeKCykbBbJINRcL-4t83Duut98mUcnIW3E-FcJOKkKfAIiioJRLJU_EGBKjsJ6-MG5sRSiLopUTkTtDIXwejE20LST0-PqpzUHv8U/s1600/IMAG0137.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgooKFGOouMjAhZUE5xhtu3mbt4X3rOFyaCAjmymcNeKCykbBbJINRcL-4t83Duut98mUcnIW3E-FcJOKkKfAIiioJRLJU_EGBKjsJ6-MG5sRSiLopUTkTtDIXwejE20LST0-PqpzUHv8U/s200/IMAG0137.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisgutHd8rn9tBDqNw_0rriF-6-9Wmz-TNkP8T6QMRY_E0p5bJJGS16usbzmaCKAx2hroYClUdYz44xw7WkdstFbAyb643LWVGAXcgWLQAkQxtFkI3OInYWm9LwoStlXXek0OELL0yczNM/s1600/IMAG0139.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="119" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisgutHd8rn9tBDqNw_0rriF-6-9Wmz-TNkP8T6QMRY_E0p5bJJGS16usbzmaCKAx2hroYClUdYz44xw7WkdstFbAyb643LWVGAXcgWLQAkQxtFkI3OInYWm9LwoStlXXek0OELL0yczNM/s200/IMAG0139.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Almost all of the words / equations on the left chalkboard were contributed by students. To spur discussion, I collected the results of their coin flip trials, and then asked an open-ended question "what can we say about these data? What should we do with them?" Mean and standard deviation were suggested by Alex. I used this to define Xi, Xbar as we will talk about them during this semester. One group of students recorded ten heads in a row. I pointed out that set of Xi and asked, "how come you were reluctant to report this? Who cares that it was 10 heads in a row?" This got students to mention things like "unlikely" and "probability" and even mentioning <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution">binomial distributions</a>. One student, I think Kirstin, described in words how the probability function for 10 coin flips would look, which led to the drawing in the right photo above.<br />
<br />
My memory is hazy at this point, but we started talking about how to test whether the coins were actually fair. I asked what the measurements would look like if I asked them to measure the widths of the coins. Students' intuition, not surprisingly was that most sets of observations we thought of would have a bell-shaped distribution. I asked if anyone knew why this was, and there were many good intuitive explanations. Alex, brought up the Central Limit Theorem, which delighted me. At that point, I wrote down in words / symbols a version of the central limit theorem, and we ended class pretty much on that note. I then showed them a Google spreadsheets example of the Central Limit Theorem in action for uniformly distributed random numbers from 0-1, see below.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://spreadsheets0.google.com/ccc?key=t4I6SR0BVSmL_u2AuLKuGwg&hl=en#gid=0">Central Limit Theorem Spreadsheet</a><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="300" src="https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AhLNnjMk2r_qdDRJNlNSMEJWU21MX3UyQXVMS3VHd2c&hl=en&output=html&widget=true" width="450"></iframe><br />
<br />
All in all, I think the class was successful, but I don't have any real measurement of that. Many students were very engaged, and almost all of the terminology and principles were contributed by students as opposed to me. I told them my goal for them is not to memorize any formulas or theorems, but rather to gain an understanding of them and an intuition so that when they encounter data analysis tasks in the future, they will know that there is an underlying theoretical framework that they can go read about and relearn. I feel like the kind of discussions we had yesterday will likely achieve that goal for most of them.<br />
<br />
Next week, we'll continue along these lines. We'll look at their coin-flip data and approach the question, "how do we test whether the coins are fair coins?" Or, we may do another group exercise that generates new measurements that we can look at. Or, a third option is to use data that students generate during the lab sessions. My gut is telling me to continue trying to do small group exercises at the beginning of class, since it does seem to be boosting student engagement quite a bit relative to prior years. Thanks to TA Katie Richardson for suggesting I do the group exercises!<br />
<br />
FriendFeed thread:<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="400" src="http://friendfeed.com/stevekoch/1b42b587/week-4-lecture-law-of-large-numbers-intro-to?embed=1" width="450"></iframe> <br />
</div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-2843678927524405612010-09-03T21:53:00.001-06:002010-09-03T21:54:31.744-06:00Ffff! Ffff! Dusting off my blogs maybe? Junior Lab for the 4th time!<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">I am a lousy blogger, but I am considering dusting them off this fall. The main reason is because the research in our lab is heating up, and some students (Larry and Andy) are getting close to finishing their PhDs. For the most part, I have found that short comments and conversations on FriendFeed are a better way for me to communicate with people, compared with blogs. But I think blogging will be useful for describing our research results, as it will allow use of figures and better formatting. And maybe it will help the students a bit in terms of publicity. Soooooo, as a way of dusting off my blogs, I'm going to make a short little blog here on my teaching blog, just to get warmed up.<br />
<br />
Junior Lab just finished it's second week. (You can read about our Open Notebook Science Junior Lab course in <a href="http://stevekochteaching.blogspot.com/2008/12/get-em-while-theyre-young-open-science.html">prior blog</a>.) I'm excited that I get to teach it a 4th time, despite being told that this would not be possible last year. This year, we have 19 students -- 3 more than the "maximum." Since I interact with each student one-on-one, It's going to be a lot of work, but a lot of fun too. I have an excellent TA, Katie Richardson, who already has provided good ideas for the course. She suggested promoting interaction early on, so that lectures will be more likely to involve student questions. So, the first "real" lecture was earlier this week, and we did a fun exercise, brainstorming on what is needed to carry out "good" science. You can see our exercise on the <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L%3ASchedule/Week_2_agenda/Small_group_exercise">OpenWetWare page</a>. I also posted this to the Science 2.0 room on friendfeed, and I'll embed the thread below if I can figure out how. It was not a "good" scientific exercise, but I was still very happy that "reproducibility" (loosely-defined) emerged as the ingredient with the most votes. This led naturally to discussion of how to keep a good primary lab notebook. OK, hopefully more to come on my other blogs!<br />
Related FriendFeed threads:<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="400" src="http://friendfeed.com/science-2-0/02fc8d3d/undergrads-in-junior-lab-informally-vote?embed=1" width="200"></iframe><iframe frameborder="0" height="400" src="http://friendfeed.com/stevekoch/02176065/ffff-dusting-off-my-blogs-maybe-junior-lab-for?embed=1" width="200"></iframe></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-20661902250109644502009-09-02T00:12:00.001-06:002009-09-02T00:16:44.698-06:00Open Notebook Science @ UNM Physics, Round 3 -- If you have technology for us to try, let us know<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">2009 fall semester has started at UNM and I'm teaching Junior Lab (Physics 307L) for my 3rd and "final" time<sup>*</sup>. I've described in <a href="http://stevekochteaching.blogspot.com/2008/12/get-em-while-theyre-young-open-science.html">an earlier post</a> the open science aspects of this modern physics undergraduate lab course. In a nutshell, it's a typical modern physics lab course with an important twist in that we operate completely using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Notebook_Science">open notebook science (ONS)</a>. I still believe (but don't have proof) that these students are at an excellent stage in their careers to learn skills and habits in ONS. We've been through about a week of the course, and already I can see that we again have a great batch of talented students! I wish I could fast forward a decade to see what they're going to be achieving in the future. Right now, though, you can see their mug shots on our <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L:People">course people page on OpenWetWare</a>.<br /><br />The thing that inspired me to dust off this blog is the realization that even though we've already started the semester, there's no reason we can't continue trying new things throughout the semester. So, if you're aware of new (or old) technology that you think would be good for ONS, I think we have several students who would be interested in testing it out in a real ONS atmosphere. If you do, please post a message here, or on the <a href="http://friendfeed.com/science-2-0/f1e105ad/open-notebook-science-unm-physics-round-3-if-you">friendfeed thread</a>. As noted earlier, OpenWetWare is the foundation for our ONS. But we've started to include other tools as well, many of them integrated into OWW thanks to Bill Flanagan's hard work. One big change this year is that I think students are likely to use Google Docs as a way of recording spreadsheet data. Tables in WikiMedia are just too annoying. And now, Google Docs are easily embedded in OWW pages. You can see an example of an embedded spreadsheet in Tom Mahony and Ryan Long's <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Thomas_S._Mahony/Notebook/Physics_307L/2009/08/24">open notebook</a>.<br /><br />There's another thing that I'm excited about that may make ONS much easier for us. Currently, the standard method for uploading photos or other documents to OWW is inconvenient. It can take a good minute to snap a photo of your experimental setup and then go through a convoluted process of emailing it to yourself, saving, uploading to OWW. I think we're close to a good solution that leverages <a href="http://evernote.com/">Evernote's</a> nice application for mobile phones. I recently discovered that you can easily make public notebooks in Evernote, and that these public notebooks have a nice RSS feed. Tom Mahony noticed that there is a MediaWiki widget for embedding an RSS feed in a page. He even implemented a test public evernote feed in his OWW notebook (see <a href="http://openwetware.org/index.php?title=User:Thomas_S._Mahony/Notebook/Physics_307L&oldid=345783#Test">this page</a>). So, now we're to this point:<br /><br /><ol><li>Snap photo with mobile phone, using Evernote application. (Actually can be any kind of note, photo, voice note, etc.)</li><li>Photo is stored by default in your public notebook (or you move it over manually).</li><li>RSS feed embedded in OWW shows new content.</li></ol>Only step #1 requires user involvement. But the problem is that currently the image is not actually displayed or uploaded in OWW, and there isn't a good way to selectively show only relevant parts of the feed. But it seems to me those are very solvable steps. I think this will be a very nice feature, because over the past couple years, I've seen all my students struggle with barriers to getting information into their electronic notebook. So, any steps that are removed are a big deal.<br /><br /><small><br /><sup>*</sup> The tradition in the department dictates that I must demonstrate teaching diversity in order to obtain tenure. There is also the belief that instructors become bored and their teaching stale after 3 semesters of teaching a course. I think these are fairly common beliefs in physics departments around the country, and it means that next fall I'll have to teach a new course. I find this policy de-motivating and inefficient, and will do my best to help the policy evolve over the next many years.</small><br /><br /><div class="zemanta-pixie"><img src="http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=688a261e-fe21-883e-9b46-dd922a83d04f" alt="" class="zemanta-pixie-img" /></div></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-88923008646855476962009-03-29T21:05:00.000-06:002009-03-29T21:05:03.613-06:00Soap film interference: One of my favorite homework assignments for conceptual physics<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>This weekend I posted one of my favorite homework assignments for my conceptual physics students. You can read <a href='http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Steven_J._Koch/080328_Physics_102_Soap_Bubble_Homework'>the assignment on OpenWetWare</a>. There are a variety of questions and activities related to the thin film interference colors in soap bubbles, including <a href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUYMJx4BK_w'>an easy kitchen experiment using a coffee mug</a>. Based on experience, most of the students who submit answers (it's completely voluntary) will not upload photos or videos. However, a few of them will, and I really enjoy seeing what they do and sharing it with everyone during lecture!<br/><br/>OK, I'll leave this blog entry short, as I also have to finish writing a quiz before the end of the night. Oh and also get some writing done on a proposal before my international would-be collaborators wake up!<br/><br/><div class='zemanta-pixie'><img src='http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=99a331c5-9052-8cda-b8ca-1b8da887a8c5' class='zemanta-pixie-img'/></div></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-29439262051067801972009-02-04T01:40:00.001-07:002009-02-04T01:40:13.297-07:005th Lecture, Wave intereference, standing waves, resonance, soundI felt like today was a really good lecture. Almost every time I looked at students' faces for feedback, I saw most of the class interested and focused. I felt like it was a class session that "clicked" and I believe that's true. I wish I knew the magic ingredient! Actually, I don't think there was a magic ingredient. I don't have any scientific evidence, but my feeling is that were a few key ingredients to making today's class effective:<br /><ul><li>Fascinating physics. Waves are fascinating. Wave interference is even more fascinating. On top of it being fascinating, I think the topics were new to most students.</li><li>Solid demos and applets. The core demos today were the wave table (fantastic) and the flame tube (not as fundamentally solid as the wave table, but gets a tremendous boost from using fire). The core applet was again the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.falstad.com/ripple/">Falstad ripple tank</a>, which we used for study of wave interference. I've already mentioned how awesome that applet is. But I should mention it again. That applet is awesome.</li><li>Solid youtube videos. We looked at some resonance things, culminating in the famous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=tacoma+narrows+bridge+collapse&aq=2&oq=tacoma">Tacoma narrows bridge collapse</a>.</li><li>I was having fun and I think I provided good context and connection of all these things. Besides their facial expressions, I also got direct feedback after class from a few students saying they enjoyed the class. I could be wrong, of course, but I really feel like people learned. <br /></li></ul>So, below, I've embedded the slideshare slides from today. I don't want to go over ever slide, but I'll point out a couple things that seemed to work well (besides the general things above).<br /><br /><ul><li>I think the students enjoyed looking at the "student answers" to the homework question. I've been doing this for a couple years, and I think it's related to "<a href="http://jittdl.physics.iupui.edu/jitt/">just in time teaching (JiTT)</a>" that I learned about at the <a href="http://www.aapt.org/Events/newfaculty.cfm">new faculty workshop</a>. It's actually quite time consuming to do this, though, and even after about 3 hours that I put into reading through their answers, I didn't feel like I was completely fair in picking the "best" answers. But I explained this to the students, and I think they are fine with that. Also, by the way, I thnk that while 3 hours is a bunch of time to spend on something like that, I do feel it's worth the investment.</li><li>I think that demonstrating wave interference with the wavetable was very effective. I asked for a student volunteer, and Ashley was quick to jump up and help. We were easily able to synchronize two counter-propagating traveling waves on the wave table. When the waves met in the middle, the amplitude clearly visually increased. Furthermore, the constructive interference was large enough amplitude for the rods to hit the table and make a "ding" sound. I love the "ding" sound, because I feel like it announces to the whole room that the waves interfered to produce a bigger wave. Thanks, Ashley, for your help with this demo!<br /></li><li>The video of someone creating standing waves with the wavetable was effective. I'm not talented enough to do this live in front of the class, so the video is very helpful. I think you can find the videos <a href="http://www.ap.stmarys.ca/demos/content/osc_and_waves/standing_waves_and_resonance/">here</a>.<br /></li></ul>OK, that's my update for today. I'm very happy that I think it was an effective class, and I'm also very happy for another reason that I can hopefully blog about in about 30 days!<br /><br /><div style="width: 425px; text-align: left;" id="__ss_986931"><a style="margin: 12px 0pt 3px; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; display: block; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3/05-waves-sound-interference-resonance?type=powerpoint" title="05 Waves, Sound, Interference, Resonance">05 Waves, Sound, Interference, Resonance</a><object style="margin: 0px;" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=05waves-sound-interference-resonance-1233734905021900-1&stripped_title=05-waves-sound-interference-resonance"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=05waves-sound-interference-resonance-1233734905021900-1&stripped_title=05-waves-sound-interference-resonance" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="font-size: 11px; font-family: tahoma,arial; height: 26px; padding-top: 2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3">Steve Koch</a>. (tags: <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/conceptual">conceptual</a> <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/physics">physics</a>)</div></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-27618591875647101252009-01-31T20:20:00.002-07:002009-01-31T20:31:29.119-07:004th Lecture, Oscillations and Intro to WavesLast Thursday was the 4th lecture of the semester, where we went over oscillations and introductory waves (slides are embedded below from slideshare). The demos I used were the wave table (I love it), mass on a spring, anchored slinky, and rubber tube stretched across room (also great). The killer applet is the <a href="http://www.falstad.com/ripple/">ripple tank applet from falstad</a>. I felt like students were bored already with Brownian motion--not sure whether any liked going over those quiz questions. I also felt a bit boring going over the details of oscillation and wave terminology, but it's sort of necessary. I used to "debrief" from my lectures on my private wiki, and I think I've now transitioned to using this blog. I'll give my commentary in general order of slides:<br /><br /><ul><li>Brainstorming on waves I think is effective--keep this exercise next time.<br /></li><li>I use the wave table a lot--to demonstrate speed, frequency, energy transfer, etc. I think any of those uses are very effective, judged by the focus of the students on the demo. I tried a new question this year, I said, "so what do I have to do to make the wave travel faster? Shake faster or slower?" Most students shouted "faster" and I didn't hear anyone say "it doesn't matter," so I think this was a good learning experience. The wave table is also good when I can shake the first rod, and get a wave to travel down and make the last rod hit the table with a "ding." I then ask the students to describe what happened. It's fun to have them realize / describe how the energy flowed from one wave into a sound wave into their ear, etc. I have no data, but I feel like the mesmerizing effect of the wave table puts people in a good frame of mind for learning about waves.</li><li>I'm pretty sure they really liked the <a href="http://www.falstad.com/ripple/">ripple tank applet</a>. I'd really like to know if any students with computers in class were using the applet at the same time I was. If you've never seen this applet before, you should check it out.</li><li>The note about earthquake seismic wave speeds from the TA, Zhang Jiang, really needed a youtube video or an applet. My verbal explanation just wasn't very interesting, I don't think.<br /></li></ul><br /><div style="width: 425px; text-align: left;" id="__ss_973510"><a style="margin: 12px 0pt 3px; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; display: block; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3/04-oscillations-waves-after-class?type=presentation" title="04 Oscillations, Waves After Class">04 Oscillations, Waves After Class</a><object style="margin: 0px;" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=04oscillations-wavesafter-class-1233380816240037-3&stripped_title=04-oscillations-waves-after-class"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=04oscillations-wavesafter-class-1233380816240037-3&stripped_title=04-oscillations-waves-after-class" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="font-size: 11px; font-family: tahoma,arial; height: 26px; padding-top: 2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3">Steve Koch</a>. (tags: <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/waves">waves</a> <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/lecture">lecture</a>)</div></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-80261039074972134022009-01-28T00:21:00.002-07:002009-01-31T20:17:36.980-07:003rd Lecture, Brownian motion, energy, conservation of energy<s>I just uploaded my lecture slides to Scribd (see below) and realized (finally) that Scribd was hacking them up, and not providing the pptx files for download. This is a problem. I probably should just upload them to OWW and provide a link to my students. I had in mind that other people may like to "discover" these, but they're so garbled on Scribd that I think people would be turned off. I did notice that Scribd recognizes images from Flickr and Wikipedia and replaces them with the page they came from. That's pretty cool...although in both cases I noticed, I had attributed the images and provided links, so removing them wasn't appropriate, in my opinion. Any thoughts from people on the best way to share lecture slides?</s> 1/31/09 SJK Note: I got advice from J-C and Cameron to use slideshare, so I've switched to that.<br /><br />OK, now some comments on today's lecture. First, I'll say that I spent a bunch of time learning names before today's lecture. I think I know about 50 out of 150 students, and within a few lectures, I think I can learn most of them (say 120). The first student who asked a question today, I knew his name, and he said, "wow, that's impressive," and I though to myself, "yes...yes it is." Yes I am tooting my own horn. Not because I'm good at learning names (I stink, actually), but because I think it's a really good thing to do in terms of building a classroom community and I'm achieving it. I think it improves the learning atmosphere and students like it. I think also it vastly increases my enjoyment of teaching. One of my talents is to get real happiness out of students' successes. Knowing their names, and even better, knowing a little about them magnifies this effect greatly.<br /><br />I have no idea at this point whether students liked today's lecture or any part of the course so far. I had assigned them to read Feynman's lecture about conservation of energy, which I love. I asked them via show of hands who found the reading (like 4 pages) illuminating, and NONE of the >120 people raised their hand! Ouch! That's really good to know, of course. I made the common mistake of putting the students way out of their context of understanding. I love the Feynman piece, but I've been through graduate school in physics. This is many of these students' first science course in college. The irony is that during my first lecture, I led them through that fantastic exercise (Wason selection task), which demonstrates how important context is. Whoops & sorry! I'm not too worried, though, as I am pretty confident that the upcoming topics are going to be pretty interesting and illuminating.<br /><br />The big demo today was the <a href="http://www4.unm.edu/physics/demos/demo.php?which=81">nose basher</a>. This is the one where there is a bowling ball hung from a hinge on the 20 foot ceiling. The unlucky person (me in this case) holds the bowling ball up against his face, let's it swing down and away, and back again. Of course, it does not bash his face (but please supply youtube videos if you know of other results). But the ball moves remarkably fast when it is mere feet from the face. It's alarming. And quite crowd-pleasing. The demo actually doesn't <span style="font-style:italic;">prove anything per se</span>. But it's so entertaining that I think it's a great backdrop for talking about conservation of energy and energy flow. A student, Brandy, even pointed out that the ball was like an inch from my face, not exactly touching it on the return. This was a great way to point out transfer of energy to the air.<br /><br />The other demo is the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rattleback">rattleback</a>," the asymmetric wooden thingy that only likes to spin in one direction. We have a big one that's easy to see. It's a great toy, just fun to observe. And like Nose Basher, it's a good backdrop for discussing energy flow...as well as the fact that conservation of energy doesn't let you predict everything about energy flow. I first saw this demo when a famous physicist gave a keynote lecture at Cornell in 1997 or so. He named the rattleback as one of his 7 wonders of the world. Another of his was the "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash">green flash</a>." I don't remember the other five, but they too have probably been solved in the post-wikipedia age :) I remember liking the rattleback, because I had previously noticed it with many telephone handsets (they exhibit the spin / rocking reversal). I tell my physics 102 students what telephone handsets are and explain to them the concept of the "home phone."<br /><br />Next up on Thursday, we start talking about waves. Two key demos. First is the "<a href="http://www4.unm.edu/physics/images/3b1035.jpg">wave table</a>." This is such a beautiful demo device. It makes wonderful waves. If I had one of these in my house or office, I would probably spend 5 hours a day waving it. The second is the <a href="http://www.falstad.com/ripple/">Ripple Tank applet</a> from Paul Falstad. It's a fantastic applet for demonstrating countless wave phenomena.<br /><div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_973535"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3/03-brownian-and-energy-after-class?type=presentation" title="03 Brownian And Energy After Class">03 Brownian And Energy After Class</a><object style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=03brownian-and-energyafter-class-1233381359770486-3&stripped_title=03-brownian-and-energy-after-class" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=03brownian-and-energyafter-class-1233381359770486-3&stripped_title=03-brownian-and-energy-after-class" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3">Steve Koch</a>. (tags: <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/atoms">atoms</a> <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/motion">motion</a>)</div></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-35461293398653803572009-01-26T13:38:00.002-07:002009-01-31T20:18:51.787-07:002nd lecture in conceptual physics course, atoms and Brownian motionLast Thursday was my second lecture in the conceptual physics course, and the first "real" lecture in terms of physics concepts I'd want the students to remember. I liked how Feynman started out with atoms in his lecture series, so when I started this course, I figured I couldn't do any better than he did. (Although I was recently told by a leader of physics education at U. Minnesota that Feynman's lectures were not effective at all in terms of the learning of the Cal tech students...whoops!) I had assigned the students some reading from Feynman's lecture and also from our textbook about the structure of matter.<br /><br />I've <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3/02-matter-is-atoms-that-move-after-class">posted the lecture slides on Slideshare</a>. Before getting into Brownian motion, we did a brainstorming exercise where students suggested things that are in the room, and I tried to classify them in real-time using powerpoint on the overhead projector. By the time we'd finished, the students had come up with many of the things which we'll study this semester and I had tried to classify them in terms of concrete versus abstract and complex versus fundamental. I didn't tell the students the classification system, and they were able to guess what it was after watching me file things away. I don't know if this exercise accomplishes much, but the students seemed engaged. At the end, I pointed out concepts on the page and how they were interconnected and there is no obvious order in which to approach the concepts. I then used this an explanation for the order in which we're approaching things: matter, waves, light, sound, etc. <br /><br />In terms of Brownian motion, I like the "molecular motion" overhead demonstration. This is a device that sits on top of a regular overhead projector and has a corral that can shake ball bearings. Unfortunately, I didn't get to practice with the demo, and the ball bearings I chose were not well shaken at all. I'd wanted to demonstrate Brownian motion by putting a big ball bearing in with a bunch of small ones, but I pretty much crashed and burned. Hopefully the Brownian motion applets we'll see tomorrow will make up for this. I definitely got lots of laughter, and being laughed at is better than being slept at, in my opinion.<br /><br />The laser speckle demonstration worked very well in my opinion. I described this a bit in my previous post. As far as I could tell from a show of hands, everyone in the entire room could easily see the shimmering laser speckle pattern on the wet paint. We'll revisit this again later in the semester when talking about interference. Thank you to Dan Ralph @ Cornell Physics for showing us this demo back when I was in grad school!<br /><br />I'm not sure whether students enjoy the discussion of scanning tunneling microscopy or not. The reason I include it is because I think it's yet another great demonstration of the existence of atoms -- you can practically see them.<br /><br />Tomorrow's lecture will be about Brownian motion (discussion of <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Steven_J._Koch/Physics_102_Stuff/02_Jan_27">homework question</a>, applets) and introduction to energy and conservation of energy. The in-class demos will be the "rattleback" and the nose basher.<br /><br /><div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_973534"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3/02-matter-is-atoms-that-move-after-class?type=presentation" title="02 Matter Is Atoms That Move After Class">02 Matter Is Atoms That Move After Class</a><object style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=02matter-is-atoms-that-moveafter-class-1233381406956197-1&stripped_title=02-matter-is-atoms-that-move-after-class" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=02matter-is-atoms-that-moveafter-class-1233381406956197-1&stripped_title=02-matter-is-atoms-that-move-after-class" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3">Steve Koch</a>. (tags: <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/conceptual">conceptual</a> <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/atoms">atoms</a>)</div></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-55486467590484307922009-01-21T14:55:00.002-07:002009-01-31T20:20:01.627-07:00First lecture in conceptual physics course, Wason selection task was effectiveYesterday I presented my first lecture of the semester in Physics 102, "Introduction to Physics." The alternate course title I like best would be "Conceptual Physics," and others are "Physics without Math," "Physics for Poets," "Why the Sky is Blue," etc. You can find my <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/11049830/Spring-2009-Physics-102-Koch-Syllabus">syllabus on Scribd</a>. Here are the goals stated in the syllabus:<br /><blockquote><br />The primary goal of the course is to help students develop a better understanding of a variety of physics concepts that they experience or hear about in their every day lives. We will strive for true understanding of the concept versus tiresome memorization of facts and trivia. This may lead to a heightened enjoyment of everyday physics wonders (such as rainbows, sunsets, waves, phases of the moon), improved ability to understand technological issues (such as energy shortages and sources, nuclear power and radiation, cell phone communication), and a deeper understanding of future scientific material including biology, chemistry, geology, medicine, and possibly a subsequent more advanced physics course!<br /></blockquote><br />I like these goals, but they are not measurable, really. I did not take the time this semester to implement pre-testing and post-testing assessment as I had hoped. Perhaps partially the reason I didn't is I'm still quite annoyed that this is the last time I'm going to teach this class for a number of years. Our department has a custom of switching courses every 3 years, and also I was told that I need to show diversity in teaching in order to get tenure. I strongly disagree with both of these notions, but well, you know...<br /><br />In any case, the goals are to have fun learning some physics concepts and to come away from the course with a positive impression of physics and science and an ability to enjoy learning about them. I don't have rigorous data, just informal student feedback (thank you emails, which I absolutely love to receive) and the scantron feedback forms. But this anectdotal evidence indicates that our goals were achieved the first two years. Plus, I have really enjoyed it and felt good that many students learned a lot and enjoyed the course. The only negative is that it takes a lot of time, especially the first semester I taught the course, where I developed about 28 powrepoint lectures from scratch, 75 minutes each--that utterly kicked my ass. I would like to put all of my powerpoint lectures on Scribd, in case they could ever be useful to someone else. The only thing keeping me from doing this is that I know I've missed attribution of some of the pictures I've "borrowed" for my lectures. Plus, I definitely don't have copyright on many of the non-CC licensed images I've used. Any comments on how to deal with this? I have in mind that I could try to correct this as I present the lectures this term, but realistically, that's not going to happen.<br /><br />I did post my <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3/01-course-intro-administrative-etc-after-class">yesterday's introduction slides on Slideshare</a>. I think the only stuff I use is from wikipedia and I attribute it. Overall, the lecture went well and I had a great time. Once again, the students are fantastic and I am sure I will enjoy getting to know them and seeing them succeed. I have some comments on a couple specific things from yesterday.<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Wason Selection Task</span><br /><br />One thing I do during my first lecture is take pictures of all of the students while they are doing group discussion. This accomplishes a number of things. First, it gets them acquainted to talking with their neighbors, which we do several times / lecture. Second, it allows me to practice learning names over the next couple weeks. I have each group write down their names along with physical description and then I go around the room taking photos of the group and telling them their group number. It will take me a couple hours to put the names with the faces in powerpoint, and then a couple more hours of studying. Combined with interacting with the students, I've been able to learn quite a few of their names. I did pretty well with 120 students last year, but this semester I have 154 students registered, so I'm nervous whether I'll be able to do this or not. I think it's important, though, and the ability to talk to people by name adds a lot of value for students. Incidentally, I'm helped by the fact that students tend to sit in the same areas every day, so I'm basically making a seating chart without imposing one. This is a technique I learned from TA training, and it works really well. Thank you to whoever did TA training at Cornell Physics in 1996!<br /><br />OK, so in order to carry out this exercise on the first day, I need an entertaining puzzle for the students to debate with each other. The first two years, I tried using the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_paradox">Monty Hall paradox</a>. That worked pretty well, but this year I switched to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task">Wason selection task</a>. I was REALLY happy with the way this turned out. First, I had them use their iClickers with the number / color version of the selection task. Since most of them did not yet have iClickers, I also had them shout out their answers (surprisingly, it's pretty easy to poll 150 students this way, and the shouts matched the iClicker graphs). Most people got the puzzle wrong (which is what always happens), and after debating, a consensus developed on the "wrong" answer (to flip over all the cards). The reason I liked this puzzle so much is because when I showed the same logic puzzle with the beer / under 21 version, then entire class immediately picked the correct answer. I could then show the two questions next to each other and blab some stuff about how learning is contextual. I think it does demonstrate that, but the important thing is that they probably had fun while I took photos and probably remembered the exercise in a positive light and some probably even tried it out on their friends after class. I'll definitely use this for my next large class.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Wireless in the classroom</span><br /><br />Someone on friendfeed recently posted an article talking about either the perils or opportunities of wireless in the classroom. It turns out my classroom has wireless for the first time, so I brought this issue up with the students. I basically told them I was worried about the possible distraction, but that the worry was far outweighed by the possible benefits it could have. I was telling them I didn't really know how we'd leverage it, but that I encouraged people to use it. While saying this, I saw a Mac laptop in front of someone, so I said, "Like you, Mac Guy (I don't know their names yet)...you're probably already checking out our facebook page, aren't you?" He said, "Yeah! actually I am...I'm looking at photos of you." (At this point I realized that there must be a bunch of embarrassing photos of me on facebook.) I said, "like what?" and he said, "Some marching band photos..." I made a perfect dramatic pause and then addressed the class, "Well...you already knew I was a dork." This drew much laughter, which made me happy. OK, that little anecdote was unnecessary, but it was funny if you were there. This wireless experiment will be interesting throughout the semester. The one thing I have in mind is that we look at a lot of applets during lecture, and I'm hoping the students will be trying them out themselves while I'm showing it on the projector. I can see that this could turn into mayhem, but I also feel that the level of learning will be much higher if they can play with the applet themselves. We'll see!<br /><br />Tomorrow we'll do the first real physics lecture, where we'll talk about the structure of matter, focused around Brownian motion. The two demos will be a demo that shakes ball bearings on an overhead projector (to give an idea of molecules in a gas) and a demo where we look at laser speckle off wet and dry paint. This latter demo is really cool and easy to do, and I find it a fascinating demonstration of Brownian motion without need for a microscope. I learned it from Dan Ralph during his graduate solid state physics course at Cornell back in 1997-ish. You'll need to see it with your own eyes (maybe I can take a video of it?), but the laser speckle pattern on dry paint does not change if you keep your head still. On wet paint, the pattern shimmers, due to the microscopic latex particles undergoing Brownian motion. So, basically you can see evidence of Brownian motion with a cheap laser and paint. Laser speckle is a great demo, because you can see it from any distance away, and it's fun to look at whether or not it's shimmering.<br /><br /><div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_973524"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3/01-course-intro-administrative-etc-after-class?type=presentation" title="01 Course Intro, Administrative, Etc After Class">01 Course Intro, Administrative, Etc After Class</a><object style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=01course-intro-administrative-etcafter-class-1233381436877015-1&stripped_title=01-course-intro-administrative-etc-after-class" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=01course-intro-administrative-etcafter-class-1233381436877015-1&stripped_title=01-course-intro-administrative-etc-after-class" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">presentations</a> from <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/skoch3">Steve Koch</a>. (tags: <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/introduction">introduction</a> <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://slideshare.net/tag/physics">physics</a>)</div></div>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-13397080056387507082009-01-15T00:30:00.001-07:002009-01-15T02:48:29.749-07:00Panic! Classes start Tuesday. Course goals for conceptual physics course.I apologize for the long delay between blog entries. Well, I suppose that will continue now that the fantasy time of Winter Break has ended. I finished up teaching Junior Lab in mid-December (my previous blog described the open science fun we have in that course). On Tuesday is my first lecture in Physics 102. I think the official title is Introduction to Physics, or possibly Introductory Physics. But the unofficial titles are more descriptive: Conceptual Physics, Physics without Math, Why the Sky is Blue, Physics for Poets, etc. This was the first course I taught at U. New Mexico, back in August 2006, and I love teaching it just as much as Junior Lab, though it is very different. <br /><br />One of the senior professors here, Carl Caves, gave me some advice about Physics 102 that I liked. He said that he views the audience not as students that need to "think like physicists," but rather as our future voters, senators, and representatives who will have to make decisions about the worthiness of funding science. Of course, I received this advice a couple weeks after I was already completely overwhelmed with the course--but fortunately, his advice fit well with decisions I'd already made, so I was comforted. The fact that these students will impact my research funding is actually not a motivator for me, though that is true. (I'm actually still undecided on the merit of always arguing for increased federal spending on university research no matter what--and you can berate me about this in the comments if you'd like.) But it is very important to recognize that these students are different than the students in Junior Lab who have chosen to major in physics. They are not going to be practicing scientists (most of them) and thus, the goals are very different. Here are the goals I came up with and put on the syllabus I handed out to the students in 2006:<br /><br />"The primary goal of the course is to help students develop a better understanding of a variety of physics concepts that they experience or hear about in their every day lives. We will strive for true understanding of the concept versus tiresome memorization of facts and trivia. This may lead to a heightened enjoyment of everyday physics wonders (such as rainbows, sunsets, waves, phases of the moon), and improved ability to understand technological issues (such as energy shortages and sources, automobile safety, nuclear power and radiation, cell phone communication) and a deeper understanding of future scientific material including biology, chemistry, geology, medicine, and possibly a more advanced physics course!"<br /><br />I don't think that is so bad, especially considering I had about 2 weeks to prepare, never having taught a course before (aside from TA-ing), and receiving little guidance beyond the course number I was to teach, the classroom times, and the course description. Actually, that's not true, I did manage to meet with one of our star instructors, Kathryn Dimiduk (now at Cornell), and she gave me all kinds of very good advice. Nevertheless, I don't think those goals are so bad, considering how unprepared I was. The funny thing, though, is that those goals will pretty much be the same goals I profess on Tuesday, unless I find some time in the next five days to revise them. This is going to be very difficult, given that I have a mini-grant due Friday. Consider this your glimpse at my standard state of affairs. I have no talent for managing multi-tasking better than this. Could I have spent time over the break preparing for teaching and grant writing, instead of learning how to blog, signing up for FriendFeed, and meeting many new people around the world? Yes, I could have. Would it have been better? I don't know, I am a very good rationalizer.<br /><br />With that in mind, "couldn't I be actually preparing for teaching right now instead of composing this interminable blog about panicking about teaching on Tuesday?" Yes, but in writing this blog, I am consciously and subconsciously thinking about complex teaching issues that will arise next week, and thus I am spending my time even more effectively than if I were to simply focus on the task.<br /><br />OK, so what is wrong with my course goals? My problem is that they are not measurable by either me or the students. Or maybe they are, but I don't measure them very well. I came away from the "New Faculty Workshop" last November with the highest priority goal of implementing assessment in the courses I teach. A key element of assessment is to have a pre-test at the beginning of a course so you can assess the actual learning that has been achieved. The only assessment I have used are exams and the end-of-course instructor assessments. Neither of these have a pre-test, and thus they don't provide any information about learning. I now view the need for pre-tests as obvious from a scientific point of view, but I, along with many other scientists who are teachers, have not really approached education scientifically in the past. <br /><br />There exist some research-based pre- and post-tests for physics, such as the somewhat-famous "Force Concept Inventory." But I am not aware of any tests which are well aligned with my "non-math" conceptual physics course. We do not use anything beyond arithmetic, really--just proportionalities or "if this increases, does that decrease or increase" kind of questions. (BTW: I was delighted to discover that there are many important physics concepts that can be learned without algebra...I feel like I could easily teach two semesters without mathematics!) Furthermore, if I were to write out goals that were measurable, some important goals would not involve physics concepts. Some may be more general science concepts. And I certainly would like to measure enjoyment and desire for learning about physics and science.<br /><br />So, this is where I stand now. If you do know of any battle-tested assessment tools for this kind of course, I would very much like to hear about them. Or, even if you have any suggestions for questions I could pose that could be used as pre- and post-test questions, I would love to hear them!Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-19386607901503381572008-12-28T13:19:00.010-07:002008-12-29T20:29:40.731-07:00Get 'em while they're young: Open Science for Junior Physics LabI've been wanting to write about an open science teaching experiment I've been doing at U. New Mexico that I think has been really successful. I've been thinking about presenting at a local teaching conference on campus (and I should still do that), and other venues, but I think blogging about it here will be an effective way of letting others know about it.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">What it is in a nutshell</span><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><br />The course is Junior Lab (modern physics lab course) at the U. New Mexico. We run the course as close to "open science" as we can, with a <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L">course wiki on OpenWetWare as the foundation</a>. The students post everything on the wiki: their primary lab notebooks on the wiki, analysis notes, Matlab code and Excel sheets, formal report rough drafts, and final drafts. Further, all of my instructor feedback is also posted on their work, in the margins. The only written things we don't put on the wiki are letter grades and a few confidential emails. (We also have no mechanism for putting video or audio conversations on the wiki...though that's an interesting and scary idea that just occurred to me.)<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Does it work?</span><br /><br />I say <span style="font-weight: bold;">emphatically: YES!</span> I have just finished teaching the course for the second time and I have been very pleased both times. I've also only received positive feedback about the open science style of the course--including many unsolicited emails from students saying the wiki was very helpful for them. Unfortunately, I only have anectdotal evidence...next fall I want to implement some kind of pre- and post-testing for assessment, as I talked about in yesterday's blog.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">What have been some good outcomes?<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Good science. </span> When I decided to teach this course on OWW (OpenWetWare), I purposefully didn't put much planning into it (my style of time management). I also decided to just give it a whirl and "be bold" figuring the worst that could happen would probably not be much worse than an average lab course. Thus, I didn't really imagine all of the wonderful things that would happen as we got started. I think the thing that I have enjoyed the best is seeing the students reading the lab notebook of other students to get hints for how to set it up, how to do the analysis, etc...<span style="font-weight: bold;">and then citing and linking the help they got!</span>. I was seeing this happen and just so delighted to see them practicing science the way it should be practiced. For some of them, this was natural, for others, I could tell they felt like they were cheating or something, because it seemed too easy. I just constantly reminded them that this was science and too keep looking at previous work and to keep citing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Open science training.</span> I don't have evidence for this, but I feel like these students will be much more likely to practice open science later in their careers. I suspect they'll be required by at least one future instructor or advisor to go back to paper and pen and "science 1.0" ... and having been through this course, I also suspect they will rebel and lead changes wherever they are.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Much better instructor / student communication</span>. One of the principles from "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Minute-Manager-Ph-D-Kenneth-Blanchard/dp/0425098478">The One Minute Manger</a>" (a cheesy little book that is very much worth reading) is to give feedback as close to instantaneously as possible. After reading that book, I think it's pretty obvious that early feedback is much more valuable than delayed. But in traditionally run lab courses, where labs are handed in on paper, the feedback is necessarily delayed quite a bit. Having the course in public on the wiki allows me to leave feedback and "grade" any time I have internet access. My goal is to give the feedback very quickly, but to be honest, I didn't do so hot this semester. Maybe for the first half of the course, I was able to provide written feedback within one week, but attending the New Faculty Workshop in November completely derailed me and I wasn't happy with being two to four weeks behind sometimes. Fortunately, I think the feedback is much more important early on in the course. Even with my failures, I still think this was a very positive aspect of the course compared to the paper alternatives.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">What have been some of the challenges?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">It takes a lot of time</span>. Having 14 students in the lab, I'd say I spent at least 10 hours / week (a lot more at certain times) providing written feedback (aka "grading"), plus the 6 hours in lab, and about 3 hours / week preparing low-quality lectures. (We have one hour of lecture on statistical data analysis and other science topics, see <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L:Schedule">agenda here</a>.) Adding up those numbers doesn't seem like a lot, so I maybe am estimating incorrectly. In any case, it feels like a lot of time, and for sure the way I teach it is not at all scalable to more students. I feel like the one-on-one interactions (both real and virtual) are a critical aspect of the course--the students are apprentices. This is in contrast to the other course I teach (Conceptual Physics for >100 non-scientists), where I also value the personal interactions with the students, but not as essentially as in this course.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Technical difficulties</span>. OpenWetWare is a fantastic resource, and I am enormously grateful for everything the OWW founders and Bill Flanagan have provided to help with this course. It is a very solid foundation and pretty much has everything we need for this course to work very well and to be far superior to the traditional version of a lab course. That said, there are very many technical improvements that could add a lot of value. Some of these were brought up at the <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:Feature_list/Lab_notebook/2007_Oct_Brainstorming">Lab Notebook brainstorming session we had in October 2007</a>. For example, integrated spreadsheeting would be great (but time-intensive to implement). Also, some kind of "auto-save" is necessary...a few students throughout the semester lost data due to either glitches or being logged out, or even their own mistakes. As we all know, losing data is a crushing blow, so it needs to be kept very much to a minimum. Two good students lost this battle and resorted to paper and pencil followed by uploading later, which of course is not a desirable outcome. (One idea I have to solve this with MediaWiki is to just install a "Save and Keep Editing" button, which would essentially be a "preview" button that actually saves the entry in the data base in addition to keeping the editing window open.) There are all kinds of other things, but I think I'm getting into a broader discussion of electronic lab notebooks in general.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">What do I want to do differently next year?</span><br />I'm very happy with the way the course has worked so far. Most of the ideas I have for changing things next year are not related to the open science aspects of the course (for example, improving or adding new experiments). I would love to hear about any ideas you have, so please post them on the comments here! Also, if you would like to emulate open science aspects of this course at your institution, I would be really happy to help you get started.<br /></span>Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5158740659716017665.post-68357875529939089682008-12-27T20:24:00.013-07:002008-12-27T22:54:45.066-07:00Learning versus teachingI sort of introduced this teaching blog with my <a href="http://stevekochscience.blogspot.com/2008/12/my-first-blog-post-at-least-as.html">first post</a> on my science blog. As I said, I've been inspired by Rosie Redfield's research and teaching blogs and thus I've set mine up so I have separate teaching,<a href="http://stevekochresearch.blogspot.com/"> research</a>, and "other science thoughts" blogs. I'm still not sure whether that's a good idea, after reading this "<a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2207061/">how to blog</a>" article from Slate that <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2008/12/how_to_blog.php">I saw on A Blog around the Clock</a>. Well in anycase, it probably doesn't matter too much, and I'm wasting too much time thinking about it.<br /><br />I'm pretty excited about having a blog about teaching (my field is physics) and connecting with others out there to exchange ideas with. So far I've taught two courses at U. New Mexico: Physics 102 (conceptual physics, aka physics without math, aka physics for non-scientists, aka why the sky is blue) and Physics 307L (Junior Lab, aka modern physics lab). These courses are quite different in terms of the student population, what we do in class, and how I spend my time. I have really loved teaching both courses, much more than I think I would have predicted before I started as an assistant prof. in 2006. I'm looking forward to sharing (hopefully over the next few weeks) many of the things I have tried out that I think have been successful. For example, I've been really happy with the "open science" aspect of Junior Lab (see the <a href="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Physics307L:People">course site on OpenWetWare</a>). Another thing I'm looking forward to talking about is a really successful experience collaborating with the course TA via private wiki for the conceptual physics course.<br /><br />So far, all of my "evidence" for success in teaching is anectdotal or non-scientific, which leads me to what I thought would be most appropriate to talk about in my first teaching blog. A couple months ago, I was really fortunate to attend the "<a href="http://www.aapt.org/Events/newfaculty.cfm">New Faculty Workshop</a>" for physics and astronomy faculty. I cannot recommend this workshop strongly enough: if you're an assistant professor of physics or astronomy in your first couple years, you absolutely should have your chair nominate you for this workshop. Ironincally, in my case, I had to miss a class and got way behind in grading due to the workshop...but it was very much worth it. (By the way: Thank you to everyone who contributed their time to leading this workshop! I won't try to list all the names for fear of leaving someone out.)<br /><br />One of the main things I learned at this workshop is that anectdotal evidence for good teaching techniques isn't a good measure of student learning. For example, I sort of took seriously the end-of-semester student evaluations without ever stopping to think about them scientifically: what do they tell me about student learning or any other goals I have set for the course (besides student happiness)? Furthermore, even the exams aren't really assessing student <span style="font-weight: bold;">learning</span> since I don't have a baseline <span style="font-weight: bold;">pre-test</span>. A pre-test is pretty common sense as far as scientific thinking goes...but it never really occurred to me before this workshop, I don't think. The pre-test is one of the main things I want to implement this coming semester (conceptual physics)...choosing the pretest will be the subject of future blogs, hopefully.<br /><br />In addition to learning about assessment in physics, I learned a bunch of other stuff. I actually took a lot of notes on my private wiki (back in November), and below I'm going to transfer over a lot of those thoughts. Yeah, I am breaking some rule about long blogging, but I'll throw some headings in there to increase the chance of anyone reading parts of this post. I'll also edit it slightly.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:180%;">Older Notes from New Faculty Workshop</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Hake_Plot.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 398px; height: 244px;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Hake_Plot.JPG" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;">Assessment</span><br />The number one thing I want to implement is real assessment: Pre and Post-testing so I can assess the effectiveness of my teaching. There are all sorts of existing standardized tests, one of the more popular being the FCI (force concept inventory), although that may not be relevant for my version of 102. Probably for Junior Lab, I will have to use my own free-response questions, since the goals are not easily tested by multiple choice, and there are few enough students to assess what they say and try to measure learning. If you care about learning, then assessment really should be a precursor to any kind of new educational thing you're going to try. Many of the results are counter-intuitive. For example, strategies that have a major, significant affect on learning seem to <i><b>decrease</b></i> student's end-of-semester attitudes towards physics. That is to say: the student feedback scores (while important for tenure) are actually not a good indicator of learning. Now, attitudes is of course an important outcome sometimes, and long-term attitudes have less data. But the point is you can't rely on student's opinions. A corollary of this is that there is no correlation at all of learning outcomes with lecturing "ability." Basically all lecturing is ineffective, whether it's from award-winning lecturers or really crappy lectures. The thing to google here is the "hake plot" and Eric Mazur at Harvard. Above and to the right is a schematic of the "hake plot." It takes a minute to understand it, so I recommend going to <a href="http://www.physics.umd.edu/perg/papers/redish/nas/nas.htm">Redish's site about the research</a>. What the plot shows is that no matter the student background, or lecturer ability, only about 25% of the possible learning occurs with plain-old lecture. There were a number of stunning things to me from Eric Mazur's talk (which in addition to being very informative was very entertaining as well). I was really surprised when I saw this plot, for two reasons. First, I was embarrassed to realize that there is a lot of good research (with real data) out there about how to effectively teach. Second, I was surprised that the data very strongly indicated that any kind of passive lecture is really not very effective. This was fun to see, because I intuitively had already been thinking this.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Some active learning tidbits</span><br />It turns out a lot of the things I was already doing in P102 are similar to some effective strategies, although perhaps not implemented correctly. For example, JiTT (Just in Time Teaching), peer-instruction, think-pair-share (I don't remember the definitions of all of these), interactive lecture demos. I should read more about these, and decide whether to implement them "correctly" based on the existing research, and also to choose assessment that will really measure the learning.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Setting effective course goals</span><br />I don't remember who, but someone asserted that 3 goals is pretty much the maximum number of goals a course should have. Actually I'm not really sure if someone said this directly, but it sticks in my mind. I realized, that my list of goals for Junior Lab is way too long--and thus none of the students could possibly remember it while actually working in lab. So, I need to reduce these to 3 or 4 clear and measureable goals. Plus, of course, I need to work these into a pre- and post-test for assessment.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Ideas about a Biophysics 101 or "Conceptual Biophysics" course</span><br />I am continually asked by faculty here what I think the biophysics curriculum should be here at UNM. I have consistently resisted implementing courses willy-nilly, thinking we don't yet have critical mass here, and it's not clear what is an effective course to implement. My own bias is our graduate students definitely do not need another required course. But I now finally I have an idea for what "biophysics" course should be taught, or at least one that I would like to develop. It fits in with what I've been realizing that it's really not any more strange having "biophysics" in the department than it is having "astronomy" (aka astrophysics). Many departments (such as ours) are "Physics and Astronomy", and there's usually (as far as I can tell) not any discussion over whether astronomy is really physics etc. In contrast, there is frequent discussion and / or discomfort over how biophysics fits in our department. But when I step back and think about it, Astronomy is really just physics applied to many non-physics things. Consider optical biophysics versus observational astronomy: both are physicists who have to know a lot about light, spectroscopy (atomic physics), optics, etc. in order to get the information they want. Anyway, I think this is maybe a valuable parallel so that other faculty in the department don't get so confused about biophysics. One of the best sessions was taught by Ed Prather from Arizona (I think), who teaches Astronomy 101. He pointed out how they really teach the students physics, and the students love it -- they just don't tell them that they're teaching them physics. The physics is so they can understand the astronomy--so they learn physics because they like astronomy. I think there could be a perfect parallel by teaching a "biophysics" course that was all about biology, but really required learning a bunch of physics to understand the biology. I am thinking first at the conceptual level, but it could possibly extend to algebra or even calculus physics I suppose, but the audience would start with non-physics majors. I already do a little of this in 102. For example, talking about the applications of fluorescence in biology, which fits in with the atomic physics, light, etc. topics. Brownian motion is also dominant, and of course, all kinds of forces inside cells. When talking about this with people at dinner, it occurred to me that it would be funny learning about forces first in cell biology world, because instead of having to imagine friction-less surfaces, you instead have to get used to "massless" systems w/ tons of friction. Why would that be any worse than assuming no friction? In fact, one misconception students usually have is Newton's first law, because we all grow up in a world where things stop pretty quickly when the external force apparently goes away. Anyway, this is the idea, and it seems completely achievable to me, perhaps even without too much more effort as an evolution of P102. However, I would be very smart to wait until post-tenure to try this.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Resources I don't want to forget about</span><br /><ul><li> Resource that look very promising <ul><li> <a href="http://www.compadre.org/portal/index.cfm">COMPADRE</a> -- the leader of this is also very receptive to ideas for improvement </li><li> PHET (very nice applets) <ul><li> <a href="http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/sims.php?sim=Optical_Tweezers_and_Applications" class="external text" title="http://phet.colorado.edu/simulations/sims.php?sim=Optical_Tweezers_and_Applications" rel="nofollow">Optical tweezers simulation</a> </li></ul> </li><li> Physlets (and related) -- this would be for more advanced students, as it allows changing the code at various levels (I'm not sure if this is the correct link: http://webphysics.davidson.edu/applets/DownLoad_Files/default.html)<br /><ul><li> I really should have a simulation component as much as possible in Junior Lab </li></ul> </li></ul> </li></ul><span style="font-size:130%;">Physics education at Oregon State</span><br />I saw an example of Oregon State physics education system, which was really impressive (by <a href="http://www.physics.oregonstate.edu/%7Ekranek/">Kenneth Krane</a>). Their classrooms had computers for groups of students, and personal whiteboards (you can get this at Home Depot for like $12, but I forget the name of it...not called whiteboard, though...and then cut it into little pieces). They ask the students something like "write down a feature of vector dot products", for example, and then walk around and collect whiteboards and then bring them to the front. (This would seem to parallel our P102 "brainstorming" sessions.) (<a href="http://www.physics.oregonstate.edu/portfolioswiki/doku.php">Paradigms in Physics wiki at OSU</a>.)<br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />A book I want to read</span><br />Somebody recommended a book, "How People Learn," (Actually checking Amazon, it's probably <a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Brain-Learns-David-Sousa/dp/1412936616/ref=ed_oe_p" class="external text" title="http://www.amazon.com/How-Brain-Learns-David-Sousa/dp/1412936616/ref=ed_oe_p" rel="nofollow">How the Brain Learns</a>, judging by popularity.) which is somewhat popular I guess (or it might be "How People Learn (2000)" by the NRC, N. Acad. Press)...I think this book maybe had the recommendation to tell students to pause and write down something that they just learned. I should use something like this in P102 (and maybe even Junior Lab)...all students are going to want to take notes. In this case, I'll tell them to spend time thinking about what they learned, and there (supposedly?) is data that this has an effect on retention.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Interactive lecture demos</span><br />I think it was during the interactive lecture demo talk (which was run by two physics profs from different universities) that they said, "The physical world is the authority" (that is: the instructor is not the authority, but the actual way the physical world operates is). I like this, and it's the point of doing interactive lecture demos. I think in my first day of P102 I use a quote from Feynman saying that theory without experiment is useless, which is similar. <ul><li> Also, I thought at this point (and other times during the workshop) how it would probably be quite effective if I could figure out a way of having the students "bet" or "invest" in the clicker questions. This is biased by my own love of gambling and investing, of course. But I feel like it could be quite effective...it seems to me that people really change their perspective when they have money riding on it. This relates to a quote Eric Mazur had when he first gave his Harvard students the FCI exam (which they did not so hot on, <i>after</i> scoring very well on his exams)...a frustrated "A" student asked, "Professor Mazur...are we supposed to answer the way you taught us, or the way we really think about the problem???"</li></ul><span style="font-size:130%;">Peer instruction</span><br />We learned a lot about <a href="http://www.physics.umd.edu/perg/role/PIProbs/">this method</a> throughout the workshop, but my notes are too scattered to copy over for the most part. Peer instruction techniques were at the heart of the Hake plot above (first presented by Mazur to us), with research showing this simple technique significantly improved student learning. Both Mazur and Prather were adamant that you need good peer instruction questions (such that half the students know the answer to begin with), but I am not convinced. I still believe a question in which 0% of the students know the correct answer can result in improved long-term learning via the peer instruction method. I don't feel like I was shown data showing that <span style="font-weight: bold;">long-term learning</span> was only improved by these "50%" questions. While thinking of this, I was also reminded of very cool education research I saw in Science Magazine earlier this year (<a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/319/5865/966">The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning</a>).<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Kinesthetic Learning</span><br />During both the Oregon State session and the Prather astronomy session, I was very impressed by the power of kinesthetic learning. Unlike some of the other things, this is something in which I haven't dabbled, but which I think I really want to try to implement. Here's a brief wikipedia article about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesthetic_learning">kinesthetic learning</a>. The idea is to thave the students act out physics concepts that are otherwise challenging to visualize. In Prather's session, he showed how to use several student actors to demonstrate light traveling 50 million light years (or whatever) from a supernova, and when events happen relative to observation due to the finite speed of light. In the OSU session, we tried acting out unit vectors in spherical coordinates with our arm, and I easily saw the benefit of a group of students doing this together. Two ideas that occurred to me for Physics 102: having students act out the photoelectric effect (perhaps even picking the people with blue versus red shirts) and also having students jump between seats in different rows to model electrons in energy shells.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Context is important to learning</span><br /><a href="http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/people/fprofile.php?id=182">Chandralekha Singh</a> gave a talk about improving teaching of quantum mechanics. Thankfully I haven't had to teach this course yet. I mean thankfully from both my and the students' perspectives! She had some good general points, though. One was an example I was reminded of that I want to use in my P102 course. I think it's called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task" class="external text" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task" rel="nofollow">Wason selection test</a>, and it's a really great way of demonstrating how important the context of a problem is to the way students will view it. You can read the link...I think the version she used was F, K, 3, 7 (instead of colored cards) and Coke, Beer, 25 years, 16 years. I could use this exercise in my first day of P102, combined with also the "<a href="http://solar.physics.montana.edu/tslater/montillation_of_traxoline.html">Traxoline</a>" lecture that Ed Prather gave.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Modeling, Coaching, Practicing</span><br /><a href="http://www.physics.umn.edu/people/heller.html">Kenneth Heller</a> gave a good lecture (the irony of this workshop is that half of it was lectures convincing us that lectures are not an effective learning technique...but only a pseudo-irony if that's even a word) about viewing learning physics from the perspective of modeling, coaching, and practicing. (<a href="http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/199911/viewpoint.cfm">This page maybe describes what he said</a>, I'm not sure, I didn't read it.) It was a good analogy between teaching someone to play golf and to do physics problems. If we were to teach someone to play golf the same way we often teach physics, it'd be something like this: Tiger Woods hits a 6 iron 220 yards straight and high in front of his students. He then says, "OK, that's how you do it. Your homework is to do it. Also, your homework is to also figure out how to hit 2 through 9 irons. On the exam, we'll surprise you with a 3-wood." But the way you would actually teach golf, of course, is to show them how it looks when done well, and then have them try it out while coaching them on, and then iterating the process. I liked this way of thinking about learning problem solving.Steve Kochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09076719001132389463noreply@blogger.com0