The talk is a progress reports on our efforts at UIUC to re-engineer entirely our calculus-based elementary physics sequence. The new courses are
Physics 111, a 4-unit course on mechanics;
Physics 112 , a 4-unit course on E and M;
Physics 113, a 2-unit course on fluids and thermal physics; and
Physics 114, a 2-unit course on waves and quantum physics.
I start by describing our overall situation: we educate "in bulk" (about 3500 students per year) and we have "collective ownership" of the courses, i.e., faculty rotate through in about a 3-year cycle, so maintain continuity of any revision is key. I then discuss the 3 key motivations for change--to improve the students' learning experience, to improve the faculty's teaching experience, and to provide flexibility for our "clients" (engineering departments) who want some freedom to tailor the physics sequence they take to their students' perceived needs. Our design goals have been to involve the students more actively, to provide many approaches to learning the material (using methods developed and tested by physics education research), and to enhance the training of TAs. The four components of the courses are (1) labs, based on the "predict,observe, explain" approach; (2) "lectures", which look deceptively like ordinary lectures but (crucially) contain 3 active learning segments (ACTs)1 in each lecture which allow the instructor to assess students' comprehension immediately and respond accordingly; the lectures are "scripted", so they are available on the web (beforehand, except for the ACTs) and are available in hard-copy for purchase by the students; (3) discussion sections, in which the students work in groups on context-rich problems; and (4) homework, which is done on the Web with CyberProf, an intelligent interface that provides feedback and hints on the problems and can grade the problems if desired. Faculty staffing is by a team of 3 professors per course.
I then present some samples of lecture material, including an ACT from Mechanics. A new course--Physics 100--is intended as a means of bringing under-prepared students "up to speed" to cope with the concepts/approaches of college physics. This program works at UIUC because of committed individuals, team players, and administrative support. The talk ends with a summary of lessons we've learned.
How Things Work is a course for non-science students that introduces them to physics in the context of everyday objects. How Things Work reverses the traditional format of physics courses by starting with whole objects and looking inside them to see what makes them work. Because it concentrates on concepts rather than math, and on familiar objects rather than abstract constructs, How Things Work serves both to reduce studentsí fears of science and to convey to them a substantial understanding of our modern technological world.
At the University of Virginia, How Things Work consists of two independent one semester courses. Each course covers about 25 familiar objects, ranging from bicycles to clocks and from microwave ovens to nuclear reactors. In each case, the most important physical concepts are introduced as theyíre needed to explain how the object works.
In the 6 years that I have taught How Things Work at the University of Virginia, most of the more than 4000 students who have participated in the course have found it a useful and enjoyable component of a liberal education. They come to see the understanding of physics as a basic skill that will assist them in innumerable situations throughout their adult lives. On a broader scale, How Things Work has precipitated a cultural change at the University of Virginia--physics and the physics department are no longer excluded from the rest of the academic community. Students from every part of the University have come to recognize that they can understand physics and that it does have something valuable to say to them.
The title How Things Work is magic--it attracts a larger and more diverse audience of students than I could ever have imagined. But I am not alone in this discovery. Both the title and the associated course concept have been invented and reinvented a number of times at a variety of institutions. What I offer to the academic community are the lessons I have learned from my experiences teaching the course and the course materials that I have developed for it--most notably my textbook How Things Work: the Physics of Everyday Life and the Instructorís Manual that complements the textbook.
For more information, see the following web site:
http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/course.html