college

Workshop: Engaging students with clickers “best practices”

April 10, 2012

Today I co-presented a workshop on clicker best-practices with i>clicker representative Dustin Jensen. Classroom response systems (“clickers”) offer a powerful way to increase student engagement by going beyond simple quizzes. They provide an opportunity to gather real-time feedback on student understanding. If you are new to clickers or need fresh ideas for using clickers in [...]

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How to get the most out of studying: Five short videos

December 12, 2011

I just found out about this wonderful little series of videos from The Physics Teacher:  How to get the most out of studying.  A cognitive psychologist at Stamford University (Stephen Chew) outlines effective study habits in some easily digestible videos pitched mainly at college freshmen In the first video, he looks at common beliefs that [...]

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Learning Assistant Liveblogging: Pedagogy course

November 3, 2011

Once again, liveblogging from the national Learning Assistant Workshop in Boulder. When we started out the conference this afternoon, and participants shared their primary area of interest in learning more about effectively running an LA program, I’d say about half of the crowd Steve Iona talked to us about what that pedagogy course entails, and [...]

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Learning Assistant Liveblog: Weekly LA meetings

November 2, 2011

Once again, liveblogging from the national Learning Assistant Workshop in Boulder. One of the central features of the LA program are the weekly meetings between the teaching faculty and LAs.   Steve Pollock and Ben Spike led this session, discussing what these look like in our physics courses, where LAs help run out of group tutorials [...]

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Education Emergency First Responders: Learning Assistant workshop liveblog

November 2, 2011

I’m currently at the national Learning Assistant Workshop in Boulder.  Since I’m right here, I thought it would be useful for me to learn more about LA programs that are being created at various institutions.  I’ll liveblog from the conference a little bit.  One thing that I’ll say up-front though — if you’re interested in [...]

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A thoughtful approach to instruction: Course transformation for the rest of us

April 13, 2011

I keep meaning to write a post about my most recent publication in the Journal of College Science Teaching:  A Thoughtful Approach to Instruction (downloads seem to be free).  The program I’m part of at the University of Colorado is the Science Education Initiative.  Started by Carl Wieman when he got the Nobel Prize for [...]

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Two examples of social media in the classroom

December 20, 2010

Today we’ve got another guest post.  I’ve been writing quite a bit about social media in the classroom, and how it is (and isn’t) a useful way to support student learning.   Kate Willson had a few interesting examples of ways that an instructor — and an entire college — are jumping on the social media [...]

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The disappearance of the final exam

October 13, 2010

Today we have a guest post from Olivia Coleman (who contributes to another blog).  Her post on the decline of the final exam follows on the heels of an interesting article in the Boston Globe — “The Test Has Been Canceled” — which generated quite a bit of buzz on the PHYSLRNR listserv, where geeks [...]

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Teach Physics promotional video

September 6, 2010

I keep meaning to post about this — the PhysTEC project has created a short (5 minute) video on physics teaching as a great career option. They’re suggesting that departments post this on their websites to promote careers in teaching physics. It’s a nicely done little video, and not a bad idea to raise awareness [...]

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Just look down three posts…

September 2, 2010

For all you nice physicists who are hitting the blog because of the shout-out in the AAPT e-NNOUNCER, just scroll down three blog posts to find my listing of all my posts from AAPT. I welcome guest posts about sessions that I didn’t make it to! Just drop me a note at stephanie (at) sciencegeekgirl [...]

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Some memorable quotes from the physics teacher conference (#aaptsm10)

August 4, 2010

I’ve been meaning to post these for a while.  I gathered a fun set of quotable quotes while at the American Association of Physics Teachers conference a few weeks ago. “Who remembers our wisdom?” David Pritchard (The answer?  The people who use it.  Physics majors retain their problem solving knowledge more than English majors, three [...]

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Online office hours: Real conversations in virtual spaces

June 22, 2010

Just a little promo fora recent post I wrote at The Active Class on Online Office Hours (thanks to Rhett of DotPhysics for the suggestion).  Here’s a sneak preview: I recently sat in on a series of workshops for newer faculty at the university, and was surprised by a resounding theme among those academics in [...]

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Powerpoint Meets Chalk: Ubiquitous Presenter

June 15, 2010

I blog on using technology to enhance student engagement over at The Active Class. My most recent post was about Ubiquitous Presenter — a free way to add interactive ink to your slides.  Here is an excerpt: When the screen lights up, students take it as a cue to tune out.  We’ve all had this [...]

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Great blog on technology and teaching

November 9, 2009

I’ve been really enjoying a blog put out by the University of Colorado’s ASSETT (Arts and Sciences Support of Education through Technology) program.  They have frequent posts on technology that relates to higher education, and how it really impacts your classroom. For example, connecting with students by Facebook; considerations, or whether to mentor via FB [...]

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A few random cool things for the class or the curious

September 17, 2009

Want a benchtop SEM scan of your fingernail? This is too cool — a company called ASPEX will take an SEM scan of any object that you send them and pst it online.  You can certainly find some intriguing stuff lying around your home or office to scan and send to them!  Or how about [...]

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Are lectures evil?

September 14, 2009

No, of course not.  But to hear us education folks prattle on, you’d think that an instructor who lectures to their students is doing them a grave disservice. Well, if all they’re doing is lecture, then their students could be getting more bang for their buck.  But lecturing is perhaps an indispensable part of class, [...]

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Recruiting and keeping women in physics (Blogging from the AAPT)

July 27, 2009

This session is about the state of affairs regarding women in physics and how we can address it. Well, no surprise, there’s still a big disparity between the number of men and women in physics — we lose women from physics at every major transition — from HS to college, college to graduate school — [...]

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Teaching the gentle art of estimations

July 7, 2009

Our education research group here at University of Colorado had a visit and a very interesting talk by Sanjoy Mahajan, director of the teaching and learning laboratory at MIT and former physics professor, last semester.  He focuses on understanding and improving students number sense, mostly through use of approximations and estimations.  He’s a very provocative [...]

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What does the digital world mean for today’s college classrooms?

June 15, 2009

I guess that I’m the last person to see this, but this YouTube video on digital technology and college education from Kansas State University made the rounds a while back.  It’s a very moving presentation of how distanced students feel from their own learning and the role that technology plays in that. From a teacher’s [...]

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[Clickers in upper-division physics] 4. Tips for success

May 28, 2009

This is the last in a series of four posts about using clickers in upper division physics courses. We’ve conducted extensive research on what students think about clickers, in introductory and upper division physics (email me if you want links to our papers).  The survey of students who had used clickers in upper-division courses (across [...]

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