Where can I get good clicker questions?

November 7, 2011

I give a lot of workshops on the use of clickers and peer instruction to improve student engagement and deep learning.  I just found out about one more useful place to get good question items. Quick background information — I promote the use of clickers to help facilitate getting students to discuss and argue through [...]

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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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The post you’ve been waiting for — physics jokes that might be phunny

October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween!  Some fun joke posts for the holiday. My favorite one for a while, from Paul Doherty: An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one tells the bartender he wants a beer. The second one says he wants half a beer. The third one says he wants a fourth of [...]

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A trick for halloween: Mixing Glowsticks

October 28, 2011

Got glowsticks?  I saw this trick at a recent Oregon AAPT meeting (tip of the hat to Karen Hunter).  Light mixing is one of those things that’s always a bit tough to show.  You shine a blue and a red light on a surface and it kind of looks magenta.  That is, if you have [...]

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Symphony of Science

October 26, 2011

So, here’s another cool thing that I heard about while at CIRTL — the Symphony of Science site.  I actually got chills watching one of these videos, which uses autotuning to turn some of the most compelling spokespeople for science into science songspeople.  Hard to describe, just take a gander at this video: (Yes, this [...]

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Adopt a Physicist is open!

October 21, 2011

Haven’t you always wanted a fuzzy little physicist of your very own?   Or, are you a lonely physicist who just needs some gentle care and feeding? Adopt a Physicist is a fun little program that pairs up physicist “ambassadors” with classrooms so that students can ask questions and interact with (gasp!) a Real Live Physicist.  [...]

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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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That’s *Mrs.* geekgirl to you…

October 4, 2011

Sorry for the long delay — I was getting married and having a honeymoon, which takes a bit of time and energy <grin>.  While I’m busy finding the time to write a more substantive post, I thought I’d share a few pictures from the day.  Why?  Because it’s my blog!  Nyah. If you’re really wanting [...]

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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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Electron flow vs current flow? (Repost)

September 1, 2011

The geekgirl is going a little nutty over here, hence the silence on the posting front.  I’ve got a good excuse — I’m getting married in about 10 days.  So cut a girl some slack.    Fun facts — we’re getting married on 9/10/11 — which only happens 11 times in every 100 years, and [...]

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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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Teaching non-majors Light and Color (and making them love it)

August 18, 2011

I sacrificed my June and my sanity this summer to teach the non-majors Light and Color course (see below for course materials).  This was exactly the population I am interested in reaching with good science instruction — not the converted, science enthusiasts, but the often math-phobic rest of the population.  And I got my wish.  [...]

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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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Standards Based Grading… with Voice (#AAPTsm11)

August 11, 2011

We had a fantastic banquet speaker at the Physics Education Research Conference (PERC) last week, Andy Rundquist of Hamline college (@arundquist).  Unfortunately, I didn’t have my laptop with me, so didn’t take the kind of notes that helps me to report most accurately on a talk.  So here’s a test of sciencegeekgirl’s poor memory. When [...]

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Ideas for the first week of class: Teaching the nature of science (and evolution)

August 8, 2011

At the start of the school year, a lot of science classes start by trying to answer — what is science?  What is this endeavor and what makes it special?  One way to do that is by the dull-and-deadening pedantic introduction to the scientific method, emphasizing the formation of hypotheses and testing of those hypotheses [...]

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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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