11.07.2015 Views

sm14pdf

sm14pdf

sm14pdf

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

Monday morningAC02: 9:-9:30 a.m. From Replicating Eratosthenes toCavendish – A Capstone Project for AllInvited – Robert Hobbs, Bellevue College, Bellevue, WA 98007; rhobbs@bellevuecollege.eduFor nearly 30 years Bellevue College has employed a capstone lab projectin the last quarter of the first year calculus-based physics sequence. Thisassignment can provide many of the attributes of an undergraduateresearch experience and may be scalable/adaptable to a variety of institutions.Students confront design, fabrication, and measurement issuesaround an experimental question not addressed by labs in any part of therest of the sequence. The current assignment requires them to improvethe experiment informed by an analysis of preliminary results. Studentsmust present their results to their peers accompanied by artifacts fromthe experiment. These artifacts often become part of our lecture demonstrationequipment collection. Students perform part of the assessmentof both their own teammates and other teams. History, our motivation,assessment, resource requirements—both material and human, benefits,and problems will be addressed in the talk. See http://scidiv.bellevuecollege.edu/physics/hobbs/capstone/Invited – Mel Sabella, Chicago State University, Chem/Phys, Chicago, IL60628; msabella@csu.eduPhysics in a biological context has been part of the physics educationdiscussion for some time, with focused sessions at AAPT Meetings,efforts to reform the algebra-based physics course, and textbooks thatattempt to meet the needs of biology students. This effort has growntremendously in recent years. Examining how our physics courses areand are not meeting the needs of biology students and whether theseclasses are capitalizing on the exciting physics in biological applicationswill be front and center this year, with three opportunities for the biologyand physics communities, as well as the research and education communities,to engage in this ongoing discussion. In this talk we highlightsome of the major contributions from the March Introductory Physicsfor the Life Sciences Conference, the June Gordon Research Conference:Physics Research and Education, and the summer theme issue of theAmerican Journal of Physics, as these events serve as guides to exploringthese intersections.AD02:9-9:30 a.m. The 2014 Conference on IntroductoryPhysics for the Life SciencesInvited – Robert Hilborn, American Association of Physics Teachers, OnePhysics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3845; rhilborn@aapt.orgIn March 2014, the American Association of Physics Teachers, with supportfrom the National Science Foundation, hosted a conference on IntroductoryPhysics for the Life Sciences (IPLS). The conference was attendedby about 180 participants with representatives from both the biology andphysics communities. I will report on the conference and the resultingrecommendations on many topics related to IPLS courses including labsfor IPLS courses, articulating learning goals and objectives, designingcourses for a wide range of life science students, what life scientists expectwhen their students take IPLS courses, and the politics of changing coursecontent and enhancing IPLS courses with research-based instructionalstrategies.AC03:9:30-10 a.m. Undergraduate Research Projects in UKUniversitiesInvited – Ross K. Galloway, University of Edinburgh, School of Physics andAstronomy, Edinburgh, Midlothian EH9 3JZ, UK; ross.galloway@ed.ac.ukEssentially all undergraduate physics degree programs in the UK requireevery student to complete a substantial research project, usually in thefinal year of the program. Students typically conduct this project whileembedded within one of the physics research groups of their institutions.Project lengths vary but usually encompass 200-600 hours of work, andthere is an expectation that the project should feature original research.I will discuss the nature of these research projects, highlighting featuressuch as project topic allocation, pre-project preparation, assessment,and the student skills developed by the project work. I will discuss thestrengths and also the challenges of this system, and give some examplesof student project topics from my own institution.Session AD: Physics in a BiologicalContextLocation: STSS 412Sponsor: Committee on Physics in Undergraduate EducationCo-Sponsor: Committee on LaboratoriesDate: Monday, July 28Time: 8:30–9:30 a.m.Presider: Nancy BeverlyAD01: 8:30-9 a.m. A Summary from Three Opportunities toExplore the Intersection of Biology and Physics:Research and EducationSession AE: PER in Upper DivisionPhysicsLocation: STSS 230Sponsor: Committee on Physics in Undergraduate EducationCo-Sponsor: Committee on Research in Physics EducationDate: Monday, July 28Time: 8:30–10 a.m.Presider: Mary Bridget KustuschAE01: 8:30–9 a.m. Student Framing Impacts Math/PhysicsThinking in the Context of Matrix MultiplicationInvited – Warren M. Christensen, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND58102; Warren.Christensen@ndsu.eduIn principle, a student who has completed both linear algebra and quantummechanics should have a wealth of conceptual and procedural knowledgethat s/he has accrued from a wealth of mathematics and physics classes.However in practice, it seems that many students come into our physicscourses lacking skills that we know were taught in mathematics courses.This investigation casts light on students’ thinking about matrix multiplicationand how student thinking appears to be influenced by their framingof the problem as either a mathematics or physics question. We use theframework of Framing and Resources to describe a single student’s thinkingduring an interview. Using lexicon analysis, we find students seem toshift from a “mathematical frame” to a “physics frame” and back again,but struggle to successfully transfer concepts between those frames. I willhighlight the markers for these frame shifts and the implications for futurestudy.AE02: 9-9:30 a.m. Conducting Research in Upper-DivisionLaboratory Courses*Invited – MacKenzie R. Stetzer, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5709;mackenzie.stetzer@maine.eduThe physics education research community has only recently begun to focusits attention on upper-division and advanced laboratory courses. Thesecourses are often intended to help prepare undergraduates for experimentalresearch at the undergraduate and graduate levels and for careers inindustry. As a result, such courses are particularly rich environments inwhich to conduct research due to the many important goals of laboratoryinstruction at this level, which vary from course to course. I will use anongoing investigation of student learning in junior-level analog electronicscourses to illustrate the importance of aligning research questions with50

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!