Educational innovation and outreach in the Department of Physics and Astronomy

Outreach:

• REU - Research experience for undergraduates

• LLE summer program for high school students

• PREP - Pre-college Experience in Physics for 9th and 10th grade women

• PARTICLE - HS classroom outreach

Innovation:

• Inquiry

• Workshops

• Preflights

Teaching/training:

• TI program

• Certificate in college teaching

• TI/TA training

Frank Wolfs

Frank Wolfs

Overview of PARTICLEKevin McFarland

• Methods:– Summer Teacher Institute

• Particle Physics, Cosmic Rays, Other Modern Physics Topics, Pedagogy

• Construct Classroom Equipment

– Classroom Outreach• Visits by Physicists to Classrooms

• Research Support

– “PARTICLE day” student conference

Focal Point: CosmicRay Telescope

• Primary “hook” is the cosmic ray telescope for the classroom– Easy to build– About $400/unit

Classroom visits

Particle day

Student projects/research and presentations

PREP Pre-College Experience in Physics for Women

2 week summer program for 20-30 9th and 10th grade women

Guest speakers, inquiry labs and discussions

Content-based grant funding

Planned and run by 2 women undergraduate science majors

Workshops in physics

Cline, Manly, McFarland, Wu, Tipton (P113, P114, P121, P122)

Very successful by multiple measures

• Assessment

• Continued module development, cross-disciplinary

• Toy chest

• Use of online applets and/or research within module

Preflights

Just-in-time-teaching

U Illinois server, moving to webwork this summer

Will use in P122 and P113 this fall

• Give reading assignment at end of previous class

• Ask students to do online quiz about the assignment

• Look at results of quiz before lecture and modify lecture and incorporate statistics on quiz results

McFarland, used in P122

Teaching and Training

Teaching Intern program - 20 undergraduate TI’s, work in labs (along with graduate student) and workshops

Weekly teaching seminar during fall

In addition workshop leaders must attend weekly leader meeting

Intense 2-day TA/TI training at end of August (physics & other depts) - talks, video taping

Teaching certificate - talented and interested TA’s teach major summer courses - good for students, good for dept.

Plans/vision/fantasy

PARTICLE program - maybe an avenue through which others might get involved with local HS outreach

Will continue to play with workshops, preflights, physics on the road, projects, etc.

Assessment: Workshops, preflights, other things

High school physics workshops?

Spread the word to other research physics departments

Open to deeper physics/Warner ties. Encourage use of physics courses as physics/Warner laboratory for interested Warner folk. Internally exploring possibility of physics Ph.D. with

concentration in physics education.

Have a unique? core of interested folk cutting across departments, LAS, Warner. WTF is an example. Perhaps this gives us an opportunity to study/assess innovation in science/engineering/math education in a way most others

cannot.

Plans/vision/fantasy