Schedule:
8:00 am to 9:00 - Registration in Lobby area outside Foley Auditorium (Room 128). Jay Culter will be giving out AAPT American Journal of Physics magazines, physics books, bios, etc. for free.
9:00 to 9:10 - Opening remarks by Kristen A. Thompson.
9:10 to 9:40 - "What concrete lab skills should introductory level physics students have?" by John Zwart.
9:40 to 10:00 - "A Classroom Response System with Greater Flexibility" by Matt Harding.
10:00 to 10:20 - "Argument-based Strategies for STEM-Infused Science Teaching (ASSIST)" by Nate Quarterer.
10:20 to 10:45 - Break and refreshments
10:45 to 11:05 - "AP Quizzes and Experimental Design" by Ian Spangenberg.
11:05 to 11:25 - "How OneNote and Screencastify Have Changed My Lessons" by Sara Karbeling.
11:25 to 11:30 - “Can physics instruction survive at our small, rural, 2-yr & 4-yr colleges?” by Erica Kilian.
11:30 to 12:00 - "Some Cool Demos" by Dale Stille.
12:00 to 1:30 - Lunch and IAAPT Business meeting and elections of president elect, vice president of high schools, vice president of two year colleges, and vice president of four year colleges.
1:00 to 3:00 - Tours and discussion of planetarium upgrades by Kristen A. Thompson.
Presentation Abstracts:
A Classroom Response System with Greater Flexibility
Matthew Harding (20 min)
Physics is an art. Certainly, many of us in introductory physics coursework expect our students to do a fair bit of drawing and diagramming as they use a variety of representational tools. Prior to last fall, I struggled with finding a way to extract (almost) all that information from (almost) all of my students (almost) all of the time. I had settled on a combination of i>clickers and small whiteboards. While I was in the midst of griping about the shortcomings of that setup at a district PD session last fall, nearly everyone in the room asked me why I wasn’t using Pear Deck. I was late to the party, but now I’m fully self-actualized thanks to the broad number of submission types that the Pear Deck platform allows for. I'll share with you some of the struggles and successes from my first year of playing around with Pear Deck in high school physics.
What concrete lab skills should introductory level physics students have?
John Zwart (30 min)
The AAPT (in “AAPT Recommendations for the Undergraduate Physics Laboratory Curriculum”) recommends that lab curriculum learning outcomes should focus on Constructing Knowledge, Modeling, Designing Experiments, Developing Technical and Practical lab skills, Analyzing and Visualizing Data, and Communicating Physics. How does this translate into specific items to be included in an intro physics course? How can we assess such knowledge? In trying to answer these questions, I have been putting together a “Force Concept Inventory” style set of assessment questions, which I will present and ask for feedback on.
Some Cool Demos
Dale Stille (30 min)
The past year has seen the development of several very cool demos to physically illustrate new and important concepts in physics and astronomy. I will present several demonstrations and some equipment with the simple purpose of increasing instructional awareness. These demonstrations are also very well suited for outreach presentations and programs.
Argument-based Strategies for STEM-Infused Science Teaching (ASSIST)
Nathan Quarterer (20 min)
K-12 science education has been largely influenced by the development and adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). To help K-12 science teachers in the state of Iowa develop a better understanding of the NGSS and how to effectively implement those standards in their classrooms, a series of professional development opportunities known as Argument-based Strategies for STEM-Infused Science Teaching (ASSIST) was piloted by College of Education faculty at The University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa. In this talk, I will briefly discuss the nature of ASSIST and the approach to lesson planning that it promotes, along with my role in the ASSIST program, and how I have used certain aspects of the ASSIST approach with physics students at my community college.
AP Quizzes and Experimental Design
Ian Spangenberg (20 min)
In preparing students for the AP Physics 1 and 2 Exams, I have begun utilizing some new curricular items. The first is pretty straightforward - give students old AP Physics questions as in-class formative assessments. I will also elaborate on a unique grading style for these assessments. Second, I implemented experimental design projects in lieu of lab reports. In classic lab reports, students are usually tasked with telling the instructor what the in-class experiment was like, the results, the analysis, etc, all of which is covered in the class discussion. Essentially, the students tell me what I told them. Instead, students are tasked with designing their own lab experiment from a prompt and detailing how such an experiment would be run, possible data that might be measured, and how that data would be analyzed. This style of assignment mirrors one of the question types on the AP Exam. I will share all of my examples of both curricular items with the group.
How OneNote and Screencastify Have Changed My Lessons
Sara Karbeling (20 min)
For the past 8 years, I have been refining my use of Microsoft OneNote as my primary teaching/presentation tool, using it instead of Power Point, Google Slides, etc. More recently, I have been regularly recording my lessons and sharing them with students to provide support for all learners. This session will focus on how to integrate new technologies into your lessons, labs, and activities!
Can physics instruction survive at our small, rural, 2-yr & 4-yr colleges?
Erica Kilian (5 min)
My interest is to collect others’ experiences concerning physics offerings and enrollments in CTE and Arts & Science transfer programs at our outstate community colleges, and perhaps situations in other small colleges that are 4-yr institutions. I’m interested in this because of some difficult trends I’m finding. Going onto my tenth year at Iowa Lakes, I’ve never had so much difficulty recruiting, enrolling, and retaining students. Perhaps an associated problem is a noticeable decline in preparedness of those who do take my physics classes, and the discouragement they often feel when asked to perform in studies that for students from a time in the not-too-distant past were appropriate and accessible. So far, I have only my own anecdotal experience to draw from. These issues are as old as physics education itself, I suppose. But there is pressure to eliminate the discipline altogether from my institution, and that is a new development.