The Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations team welcomes participants to a half-day workshop including a tour of as many of our demonstration spaces (storage, fabrication, and preparation) as the untimely renovation of our Science Center and lecture halls will permit, as well as performing and answering questions on selected demonstrations spanning mechanics and fluids, electricity and magnetism, waves and optics, thermal, and modern physics. Each year we support roughly thirty courses reaching approximately two thousand students, who report demonstrations are among the most memorable and enjoyable aspects of their Harvard experience. In this workshop, we aim to provide the same to you. (https://sciencedemonstrations.fas.harvard.edu/)
8:00 AM
|
The purpose of this workshop is to collectively develop strategies for accessible and inclusive group work. Through an extensive literature review, we have developed a guide of effective and inclusive group work strategies. Using this guide as a jumping off point, we will discuss and document accessible and inclusive practices to support disabled students in physics courses. This workshop is appropriate for high school teachers, postsecondary instructors, and students with an interest in teaching. Please bring your own computer to use during the workshop.
8:00 AM
|
The Underrepresentation Curriculum is a free, open, modular, teacher-created resource that supports high school and college science instructors in empowering students to examine issues of equity, identity, and justice in society and in STEM. This workshop will introduce the curriculum by engaging participants themselves in the learning activities (e.g., discussing the role of objectivity and subjectivity in science and analyzing data about disparities in representations of certain groups of people). The workshop will familiarize participants with the support materials available and make space for exploration. Finally, participants will have the opportunity to discuss how the curriculum can be implemented in their classrooms, and collaborate with other instructors to create viable actions beyond the workshop.
8:00 AM
|
This interactive workshop welcomes all physics instructors from high schools (AP), two-year colleges, 4-year colleges, and universities who are interested in including a computational component in their courses. The workshop will offer multiple resources attendees can use in the classroom including instructional materials and assignments. We will also include an introduction to the resources on the PICUP web site (Partnership for Integration of Computation into Undergraduate Physics) https://www.compadre.org/PICUP/, and assessment tools. Attendees will also benefit from getting to know others who are interested in computing in the physics curriculum, and network with others with similar interests. The workshop will include hands-on time, so please bring a laptop. No prior programming experience is needed. We will present materials and provide resources in multiple formats including excel spreadsheets. This workshop is supported by the NSF, grant DUE-2021209.
8:00 AM
|
Participants* will learn how to modify introductory physics courses at any level to help students develop a good conceptual foundation, apply this knowledge in problem solving, and engage them in science practices. The framework for these modifications is the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach. We provide tested curriculum materials including: (a) The second edition of College Physics Textbook by Etkina, Planinsic and Van Heuvelen, the Physics Active Learning Guide and the Instructor Guide; (b) a website with over 200 videotaped experiments and questions for use in the classroom, laboratories, and homework; (c) a set of innovative labs in which students design their own experiments, and (d) newly developed curriculum materials that implement the ISLE approach in both online and in-person settings. During the workshop the participants will learn how to use the materials in college and high school physics courses to help their students learn physics by practicing it. *Please bring your own laptop to the workshop if you own one. If you do not own a computer, you will be paired with somebody who does.
8:00 AM
|
Students who complete an introductory physics course may be under the impression that physics somehow “stopped” in the late 19th or early 20th century. Of course this idea could not be further from the truth, as physicists today continue to work on addressing an ever-growing list of unsolved questions: Where has all the antimatter gone? What is dark matter? What is dark energy? (What questions have we not thought of yet?) Physicists from all over the world work to address these and many other questions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, on the border of Switzerland and France. This workshop will focus on how teachers can tap into the excitement of LHC physics to both motivate students and provide a contemporary context for them to engage with topics and practices covered in introductory physics courses, including (but not limited to) conservation laws, data collection, organization, and analysis, and making claims based on evidence. Participants in this workshop will alternate between “student mode” and “teacher mode”, will analyze authentic LHC data, and will get a chance to work through some activities from QuarkNet’s Data Activities Portfolio. The workshop will conclude with a discussion on classroom implementation. Some of the activities will be computer-based, so please bring along a laptop! This workshop is supported by the NSF-funded QuarkNet program, https://quarknet.org, and OPTYCs, https://optycs.aapt.org/.
8:00 AM
|
In this workshop we will start with a discussion and questions on ways we have used demonstrations in the past. We'll work together to make a list of what has and has not worked regarding how demonstrations were used. In particular, we will focus on the format and methods of presentation, rather than the specific equipment. From there, we'll learn about the Demonstration Framework model, and how to use it for demonstration development. We will then break into pairs, and each attendee will use the model to develop their own hypothetical demos. In the end, everyone who attends will get their own printed copy of the framework to take home so they may continue to use it.
8:00 AM
|
PEER is designed for emerging education researchers interested in expanding theoretical or methodological expertise. Through peer and near-peer exchange, this PEER workshop involves hands-on activities to increase participants' capacity for Discipline-based Education Research. Topics include research design, choosing appropriate theoretical frameworks, and matching one's research questions to accessible data. A hallmark of PEER workshops is their responsiveness to participant interests, and activities center around advancing each individual's specific research project.
8:00 AM
|
In this workshop we will introduce and play games that we have developed to motivate K12 students to learn concepts from quantum information science: quantum key distribution, quantum cloning, and quantum teleportation. No prior quantum knowledge needed.
8:00 AM
|
In this workshop, participants will explore more than 200 physics simulations, learn about research-based best practices for their use, and create activities for their own classrooms. The VIPER physics simulations (http://physics.bu.edu/~duffy/VIPER/) and best practices shared in this workshop are for introductory physics and astronomy at both the college and high school levels. The majority of the time spent in this workshop will be in creating new activities, providing opportunities for participants to share in small groups, elicit feedback from each other, and work through a multi-step design process. Existing activities created by our Boston University PER group and others will be shared as examples and models for the developed work. As the goal of this workshop is for participants to walk away with completed activities for their own classroom, we ask that everyone please bring a laptop to the workshop. The Visualizations in Physics Education Research (VIPER) project is supported by NSF DUE-2120980 and DUE-1712159.
1:00 PM
|
How can your smartphone help you investigate blood flow across your heart valves? The normal forces that act on you during a walking gait? A running gait? Participants in this workshop will use their smartphones to experience hands-on, inquiry-based biomedical investigations designed to engage physics students interested in health and life sciences. The workshop curriculum will use the sensors already embedded in every smartphone, thus increasing usability and making it possible for every student in your classroom (in-person or remote) to conduct the experiments. Using state-of-the-art medical applications, participants will conduct experiments using the accelerometer, gyroscope and image sensors on your phone to characterize the biomechanical motion of your gait, cardiac cycle including aortic and mitral value opening and closing, the periodic blood flow in your finger during systole and diastole, and the physiological tremors of your hand. Editable, active-learning biomedical physics curriculum using the smartphone as a sensor will be shared allowing faculty to implement the smartphone as an investigative tool in your “Introductory Physics for the Life Science and Beyond” classrooms. Participants should bring their own smartphone to this workshop and a computer loaded with their favorite spreadsheet software to process data that will be collected during the workshop.
1:00 PM
|
Computer Science Integration in HS Physics and Physical Science - Ever wondered how to integrate a little bit of coding or data science into a high school physics or physical science class without overwhelming your students or taking up lots of class time? This hands-on workshop will provide an overview of simple, conceptually-motivated “STEMcoding” exercises where students construct PhET-like games like asteroids and angry birds using an in-browser editor that works great on chromebooks or whatever devices you have. We will also provide a tutorial of the STEMcoding Object Tracker which is a browser-based program that can track the motion of brightly colored objects moving against a solid colored background. These activities are part of a much wider curriculum that is highlighted on the STEMcoding YouTube channel (http://YouTube.com/c/STEMcoding). The STEMcoding project is led by Prof. Chris Orban from Ohio State Physics. PLEASE BRING A LAPTOP, chromebook or a tablet with a physical keyboard.
1:00 PM
|
Physics has been and continues to be a site of racial oppression, as evidenced by both the stories of harm voiced by People of Color in the discipline and by the large-scale patterns in outcomes for People of Color in the field. A critical lens calls us to both acknowledge and seek to dismantle the impacts of white supremacy in physics and to lean into a liberatory imagination, envisioning and then working to co-create a future that centers collective thriving. As a conceptual framework and methodological approach, critical race spatial analysis (CRSA) provides such a lens to help identify spatial dimensions of injustice in physics teaching and learning, while simultaneously curating “counter-spaces” that dream imagined futures to design racially just classrooms. As part of a NSF-funded project, an interdisciplinary team that includes physics undergraduate students are collaborating to articulate the possibility of a new spatial imaginary in physics, guided by the tenets of CRSA. For this workshop, we will share both the process and products of this dreaming process, including visualizations of liberatory physics classrooms. We will invite participants to co-dream with us about liberatory physics education through a series of discussions, art-making, and curricular planning centered around three questions: 1) How can art be employed to examine oppression in classrooms and other learning spaces and used to design a physics community in which everyone gets what they need and deserve? 2) What kinds of collectives and strategies could we curate or join to make a vision of a liberatory physics education “real”? and 3) How might we build from this workshop, as physics instructors, to transform physics classrooms going forward?
1:00 PM
|
Dual Process Theories to Interpret Students' Physics Reasoning - We have been investigating the relationships among students’ intuition, reasoning, and conceptual understanding in physics. A major part of this project has been the development of assessment tasks and methods for disentangling conceptual understanding and reasoning. We have drawn on dual-process theories of reasoning from cognitive science in the interpretation of student learning data and the development of instructional interventions to improve student reasoning. In this workshop, participants will engage with these issues by examining written student responses and viewing and discussing video. We will present curricular interventions developed in alignment with dual-process theories and will describe a framework that can be used for the development of additional interventions.
1:00 PM
|
Fun, Engaging, Effective, Intro Labs and Demos (plus Virtual Options) - Participants in this workshop will have hands-on experience with research-validated active learning activities for the introductory laboratory—including Realtime Physics (RTP) labs using computer-based tools and video analysis—that have been used effectively in university, college and high school physics courses. They will also experience Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILDs)—a strategy for making lectures more active learning environments. These active learning approaches are fun, engaging and validated by physics education research (PER). Research results demonstrating the effectiveness of RTP and ILDs will be presented. Emphasis will be on activities in mechanics, electricity and magnetism and optics. Distance learning options for lab and lecture will also be included. The following will be distributed: Modules from the Third Edition of RTP, the ILD book and free access to virtual materials for lab and lecture.
1:00 PM
|
Scientific reasoning and decision-making abilities are highly sought outcomes of modern education. We have developed and evaluated a complete inquiry-based lab curriculum that explicitly promotes these abilities by engaging students in activities that include designing and conducting controlled experiments, making appropriate decisions, conducting data analysis, and interpreting and synthesizing results to construct meaningful evidence-based claims. The curriculum aligns with the AAPT Lab Guidelines and cultivates an inclusive culture to support a diverse population. During the workshop, participants will work through several lab activities to learn about the underlying curricular framework, which involves operationally defined sub-skills: including abilities for controlling variables in multi-variable contexts, data analytics, and causal reasoning. Participants will learn how assessments can be used to measure important skills-based outcomes, and our own results will be shared. Participants will be provided access to all lab materials (both in-person and online versions) and assessments, as well as learn how to modify their existing in-person or online labs, if preferred.
1:00 PM
|
Reasoning with Multiple Representations in AP Physics (and Beyond) - The 2024-25 school year will introduce revamped AP physics exams in all courses. This workshop will briefly share highlights of the exam redesign, one of which is reasoning with multiple representations (words, diagrams, equations, graphs, etc.). The bulk of the workshop will be participants working through and discussing a variety of problem solving activities that incorporate multiple representations. While these curricular tools will be presented in the context of AP courses, they are impactful in any physics course.
1:00 PM
|
Technology Enabled Active Learning (TEAL) is a twenty-three year ongoing educational experiment at MIT in developing a flipped active learning model for two introductory physics courses, Physics I Newtonian Mechanics (8.01) and Physics II Electricity and Magnetism (8.02). The workshop will be held in the TEAL classroom at MIT. It will include a description of the pedagogical model and an example lesson illustrating how Faraday’s Law is taught in the TEAL style. Participants should bring their laptops.
1:00 PM
|
TEAM UP Together & Transfer Students: Supporting student transfer between two- and four-year institutions - For students transferring from two-year to four-year institutions, the transition itself is known to have multiple challenges. Given that a larger proportion of minoritized students, especially Black and African American, begin their physics degrees at two-year colleges, building better bridges across these institutions can provide necessary support for student success. In this workshop, we explore the findings from the TEAM-UP report, and work collaboratively to strategize ways to make the transfer process seamless. These plans will help all transfer students succeed, and have the potential to help all students by reducing barriers to success. This workshop is sponsored by the TEAM-UP Together Program and The Organization for Physics at Two-Year Colleges (NSF grant #2212807).
1:00 PM
|
Sunday, July 7 from 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM - Career development and networking can be time consuming, so AAPT is offering a fun and exciting way to get connected to a large number of early career and seasoned physics professionals in a short amount of time. Speed networking provides the opportunity to discuss career goals and challenges with a new contact for five minutes, exchange information, and then move on to the next person. By the end of the event each participant will have meaningful interactions with over half a dozen colleagues and the opportunity to meet many more. If you think you made a good contact, follow up with the person and schedule a time to meet for coffee. It's that simple! By the end of the first day of the conference, you would have already made several personal connections with other attendees. If you have business cards, don't forget to bring them. Date and Time subject to change.
8:00 PM
|