Educational%20innovation%20and%20outreach%20in%20the%20Department%20of%20Physics%20and%20Astronomy

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Educational innovation and outreach in the
Department of Physics and Astronomy

• Outreach
• REU - Research experience for undergraduates
• LLE summer program for high school students
• PREP - Pre-college Experience in Physics for 9th
  and 10th grade women
• PARTICLE - HS classroom outreach
• Innovation
• Inquiry
• Workshops
• Preflights
• Teaching/training
• TI program
• Certificate in college teaching
• TI/TA training

Frank Wolfs
Frank Wolfs
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Overview of PARTICLEKevin McFarland

• Methods
• Summer Teacher Institute
• Particle Physics, Cosmic Rays, Other Modern
  Physics Topics, Pedagogy
• Construct Classroom Equipment
• Classroom Outreach
• Visits by Physicists to Classrooms
• Research Support
• PARTICLE day student conference

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Focal Point CosmicRay Telescope

• Primary hook is the cosmic ray telescope for
  the classroom
• Easy to build
• About 400/unit

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Classroom visits
Student projects/research and presentations
Particle day
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PREP Pre-College Experience in Physics for Women
2 week summer program for 20-30 9th and 10th
grade women
Content-based grant funding
Guest speakers, inquiry labs and discussions
Planned and run by 2 women undergraduate science
majors
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Workshops in physics
Cline, Manly, McFarland, Wu, Tipton (P113, P114,
P121, P122)
Very successful by multiple measures

• Assessment
• Continued module development,
  cross-disciplinary
• Toy chest
• Use of online applets and/or research within
  module

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Preflights
Just-in-time-teaching
McFarland, used in P122

• Give reading assignment at end of previous
  class
• Ask students to do online quiz about the
  assignment
• Look at results of quiz before lecture and
  modify lecture and incorporate statistics on quiz
  results

U Illinois server, moving to webwork this
summer Will use in P122 and P113 this fall
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Teaching and Training
Intense 2-day TA/TI training at end of August
(physics other depts) - talks, video taping
Teaching Intern program - 20 undergraduate TIs,
work in labs (along with graduate student) and
workshops
Weekly teaching seminar during fall
In addition workshop leaders must attend weekly
leader meeting
Teaching certificate - talented and interested
TAs teach major summer courses - good for
students, good for dept.
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Plans/vision/fantasy
Will continue to play with workshops, preflights,
physics on the road, projects, etc.
PARTICLE program - maybe an avenue through which
others might get involved with local HS outreach
Assessment Workshops, preflights, other things
High school physics workshops?
Spread the word to other research physics
departments
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Plans/vision/fantasy
Open to deeper physics/Warner ties. Encourage
use of physics courses as physics/Warner
laboratory for interested Warner folk.
Internally exploring possibility of physics Ph.D.
with concentration in physics education.
Have a unique? core of interested folk cutting
across departments, LAS, Warner. WTF is an
example. Perhaps this gives us an opportunity to
study/assess innovation in science/engineering/mat
h education in a way most others cannot.