How People Learn

Dance, dance your PhD

November 20, 2011

I love the Dance your PhD contest, in which doctoral students are invited to take the horrible monster that gobbled their life for 5+ years and interpret it through dance in a 5-minute video.  What better way to become a clear communicator? I was even more excited to see that one of my colleagues, and [...]

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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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Some things I learned on the conference circuit

October 17, 2011

I’ve been busily conferencing over the past several weeks, and wanted to share a few of the fantastic tips and ideas that I got along the way.  So, this is a bit of a smorgasbord post. First, I was at the Center for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) conference in lovely Madison, WI.  [...]

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Teaching faculty about effective use of clickers #clickers

September 13, 2011

I’ve been working for the past several years to figure out the best ways to teach faculty about how to use clickers effectively; to engage students, ask questions that get students thinking, and to use peer discussion to help students work together to learn from the questions.  It’s not always easy.  Recent research has shown [...]

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Fancy schmancy new podcast page! (Learning about Teaching Physics)

September 6, 2011

Thanks to the wonderful efforts of Matt Riggsbee over at Compadre (whom I owe a beer or three), the Learning about Teaching Physics podcast has a beautiful webhome.  I still have just the two podcasts produced (on clickers and classroom demonstrations), but stay tuned for the next one on learning styles (or, the myth thereof).  [...]

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The Art (and Science) of In-Class Questioning via Clickers (Learning About Teaching Physics podcast) #clickers

August 22, 2011

In this second episode of the podcast, I explore recent research on teaching with clickers and in-class questioning:  What techniques do teachers use to make maximal benefit of this teaching approach? Are “clickers” or “personal response systems” just the latest fad in education? Or is there solid research behind their use? In this episode we [...]

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Paying attention to what students do in class: Proximal formative assessment (#AAPTsm11)

August 15, 2011

The final day of the Physics Education Research Conference (PERC) I went to a session all about proximal formative assessment.  Proximal formative assessment is the “teachers’ continual, responsive attention to learners’ developing understanding as it is expressed verbally moment to moment:  the process by which teachers carefully attend to specific aspects of individual learners’ developing understanding, [...]

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Providing validated tests for instructors to use (#AAPTsm11)

August 4, 2011

Our plenary speaker this morning was Thomas Holme, of Iowa State University, speaking to us about the standardized assessments in chemistry.  Sounds boring, but he raised some interesting and insightful thoughts about assessment. He started out by describing the fine line he has to walk as an instructor: “Teaching is inherently personal and inescapably corporate.  [...]

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Adopt, Adapt or Abandon? Instructors’ Decisions to Use Research-Based Materials (#AAPTsm11)

August 3, 2011

Just gave my 10-minute talk at AAPT on my work examining the sustainability of our course transformation efforts in junior E&M. Physics education researchers often develop materials for classroom use. Instructors then choose which of those materials they would like to implement. We present a case study of University of Colorado’s transformed junior E&M course. [...]

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Seeing isn’t believing: Do classroom demonstrations help students learn? (Learning About Teaching Physics podcast)

July 29, 2011

In this first episode of my new Learning About Teaching Physics podcast, we explore classroom demonstrations.  Do they accomplish what we hope that they will? 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 [...]

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New podcast: Learning About Teaching Physics

July 28, 2011

This has actually been in the works for about a year, but I’m finally unveiling my brainchild of the past several years — a podcast to communicate physics education research to working teachers.  I’m calling it Learning About Teaching Physics, and our amazing local high school teacher Michael Fuchs is co-hosting it with me.  Here’s [...]

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A new site for identifying misconceptions

June 9, 2011

When teaching, it’s crucial to know what your students tend to have difficulty with, so you can target your instruction to those topics. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) just released a really nicely designed website called Science Assessment for identifying these common student difficulties with content in life science, physical science, [...]

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News flash! Interactive engagement helps students learn

May 23, 2011

A study that I was told about last year was just released in the latest issue of Science — in A Better Way to Teach? my colleagues in the Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia detail their rather elegant study.  Picture this — a young upstart postdoc approaches a veteran teacher, who [...]

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Get the word out: Effective communication of physics education research

May 16, 2011

I recently gave a plenary talk at the Foundation and Frontiers of Physics Education Research – Puget Sound conference.  What an honor!  And very fun, because I got to talk about anything that I wanted to.  I’ve been wanting — for ages — to talk about the intersections that I see between science journalism and [...]

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Mind Hacks: Familiar faces in unfamiliar places

May 9, 2011

As part of this mini series of cool tricks about the brain (from Mind Hacks), I wanted to write about one neat little trick that I use in a lot of my talks.  It wakes people up.  And the kind of delight that occurs from this simple little Hack makes an audience warm up to [...]

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Video Games: A New Frontier in Pedagogy

May 4, 2011

I’ve been idly curious about the latest research and thought about video games, and what we as educators can learn from them.  So when Pamelia contacted me and asked if she could write about the topic, I jumped on it.  James Gee’s stuff is very interesting to me, and I’ll be curious to hear what [...]

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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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What we see isn’t always what’s happening (OR why demos don’t always work)

January 18, 2011

Consider this quote: “We don’t know what we see; we see what we know.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I’ve often wished I’d gone into cognitive science — it’s just so interesting.  (Sciencegeekgirl factoid: My undergrad degree is in social psychology.)  Instead I earn my daily (gluten-free) bread by teaching physics and can throw only [...]

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Playing the “I wonder” game: Object oriented inquiry

January 5, 2011

I have been feeling very frustrated lately with my seeming inability to make any sort of connection between the exciting, hands-on, inquiry and exploration style of education that I learned at the Exploratorium, and reforms in college education.  I’m learning interesting things about how people learn, cognitive science, the importance of motivation and real-world examples, [...]

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