Learning About Teaching Physics
Nuggets from the education research that you can use in class tomorrow
We're getting the physics education research out of those stuffy journals and into your hands (or, rather, ears) with this little audio podcast. Co-hosted by veteran high school physics teacher Michael Fuchs and physicist and education researcher Stephanie Chasteen, each episode investigates a piece of the research literature and how it can relate to your classroom.
This podcast is supported by a grant from the American Association of Physics Teachers (Physics Education Research Topical Group) and supported by the University of Colorado's Science Education Initiative, the Physics Education Research Group at the University of Colorado and sciencegeekgirl enterprises.
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Visual, verbal, or auditory? The truth behind the myth behind the truth of learning styles.
Are you a visual learner or an auditory learner? I bet you can tell me which you think you are. But does it matter? In this podcast, we discuss the research on individual learning styles, and how science learning requires us to blend the visual and the verbal.
Thanks to Hal Pashler of UC San Diego and Richard Mayer of UC Santa Barbara for their participation in this podcast.
Show/Hide Notes
Length: 15:19
Size: 12.4 Mb
Date: Nov 22, 2011
Studies Cited
"Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence," H. Pashler, M. Mcdaniel, D. Rohrer and R. Bjork, Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105-119 (2009)
Testing the ATI hypothesis: Should multimedia instruction accommodate verbalizer-visualizer cognitive style? Laura J. Massa and Richard E. Mayer, Learning and Individual Differences, 16, 321-335 (2006)
Credits
Today's music was licensed under the Creative Commons:
- DC 3000 by the Thievery Corporation
- Nervously Made by Ian Nelson
- Whadidyasay by Zap Mama
- Scheming Weasel and Firmament by Kevin McLeod (http://incompetech.org)
- Sound effects by Stuart Duffield, Blastwave FX, Andrew Potterton, and Sampleconstruct via Soundsnap (http://soundsnap.com)
The blog post discussed at the beginning of the show was from Office Zealot: http://blogs.officezealot.com/spiller/archive/2007/02/10/20130.aspx
Other Resources
"Think you're an auditory or visual learner? Scientists say it's unlikely", Morning Edition, National Public Radio (August 29, 2011)
The Art (and Science) of In-Class Questioning via Clickers
Are "clickers" or "personal response systems" just the latest fad in education? Or is there solid research behind their use? In this episode we share some recent studies that really highlight how clickers can be used most effectively, and how they can save the world!
Thanks to Eric Mazur of Harvard University, Jenny Knight of University of Colorado at Boulder, and Ed Prather of the University of Arizona for their participation in this podcast.
Length: 15:34
Size: 12.7 Mb
Date: July 16, 2011
Studies Cited
Studies cited were:
- Why Peer Discussion Improves Student Performance on In-Class Concept Questions, Michelle Smith, William Wood, Wendy Adams, Carl Wieman, Jenny Knight, Nancy Guild, and Tin Tin Su, Science, Vol. 323 no. 5910, pp. 122-124 (2009).
- Combining Peer Discussion with Instructor Explanation Increases Student Learning from In-Class Concept Questions, Michelle Smith, William Wood, K. Krauter, and Jenny Knight. CBE - Life Sciences Education, 10, 55-63 (2011).
- Listening to student conversations during clicker questions: What you have not heard might surprise you!, Mark James and Shannon Willoughby, AM. J. Phys., 79(1), 123-133 (2011). Described here.
- Technology talks: Clickers and grading incentive in the large lecture hall, Shannon D. Willoughby and Eric Gustafson, AM. J. Phys., 77(2), 180 (2009).
Credits
Today's music was:
- DC 3000 by the Thievery Corporation (Creative Commons)
- Funkorama, Firmament and Rumination by Kevin McLeod
- Sunshine by Mark Crawford
- Sound effects by audiofruit, SFX Bible, Rebecca Parnell and SFX Source, on Soundsnap.
Other Resources
There are a wide variety of instructor resources on clicker use available at STEMclickers.colorado.edu, including videos, literature, and an instructor's guide.
Ed Prather's version of Peer Instruction is called Think Pair Share (and you can read more about it at that link).
Books include:
- Peer Instruction: A User's Manual (by Eric Mazur)
- Teaching with Classroom Response Systems (by Derek Bruff)
Seeing isn't believing: Do classroom demonstrations help students learn?
Physics is the study of nature. So, physics classes typically include demonstrations of how those laws of nature play out, often in surprising ways. But do students see what we intend them to see? In this episode, we find out what the research says about classroom demos, and how to help students get the most out of them.
Thanks to Eric Mazur of Harvard University and Catherine Crouch of Swarthmore College for their participation in this podcast.
Length: 18:12
Size: 14.8 Mb
Date: May 17, 2011
Studies Cited
Study cited in this episode: Classroom demonstrations: Learning tools or entertainment? Catherine H. Crouch, Adam P. Fagen, J. Paul Callan, and Eric Mazur, American Journal of Physics, 72 (6), 835 - 838 (2004). Andrew Fagen's more detailed thesis can be found here.
Credits
- Audio of Mazur's talk at Harvard provided by the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics' Science Media Group. View the whole video here.
- Audio of Shoot the Monkey from Science Theater
- Show music: "DC 3000" by the Thievery Corporation, "Watidori" by Cornelius, "Action at a Distance" by Matmos, and Mesa State by Mark Crawford. All music is licensed under the Creative Commons except for music by Mark Crawford.
- Coin on water image from Roger McLassus on Wikimedia
Other Resources
- The Interactive Lecture Demonstration Project, a descriptive paper, and an accompanying study on their effectiveness.
- University of Maryland Scientific Community Labs, which ask students to design their own experiments
- The Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE), cultivates students' ability to design investigations. This introductory paper has a good overview.
Below is the image of the scale demonstration described in the podcast:
If you would like to give feedback or provide a recommendation, please contact Stephanie Chasteen.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons License
