Session T06: Teaching Physics Online

Not Participating

During this COVID-19 pandemic, many instructors have been asked to quickly move their face-to-face classes online. This is challenging for many reasons: many instructors and students don't have experience teaching and learning online; making the transition quickly is difficult; and many students have challenges accessing up-to-date technology, internet, and a quiet place to study. Moreover, all of this is happening against a backdrop of high stress for students and instructors alike. Being compassionate and mindful of equity issues is especially important during this period. At the same time, today's challenges may provide opportunities that can carry forward past the pandemic, to re-create our classes as more compassionate environments --- where instructors and students see each other more as whole people and assume best intentions in each other, and instructors place higher value on student agency. In this talk, I'll share research-based principles and strategies for moving courses online that focus on compassion, equity, and interaction; and I'll share examples of how instructors (including me) have been approaching these aspects of teaching physics online. This will draw from our article on the website PhysPort (Strubbe {\&} McKagan 2020, https://tinyurl.com/physport-remote), workshops on remote teaching I have co-facilitated (APS New Faculty Workshop, Center for Astronomy Education), and my experience this fall with the University of Central Asia teaching physics online for students in rural mountain communities in Tajikistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan.   

Not Participating

Replicating active learning strategies in a remote setting brings with it many challenges that require careful attention to both pedagogy and technology. In this talk, I describe our departmental efforts over the past year to foster student engagement and collaboration, but to also to provide real-time feedback in introductory physics courses using Desmos – an online calculator and activity builder that is freely available. Specific examples of how we transformed and modified in-class learning activities for use in Desmos will be presented, including card-sorting, white-boarding, individual practice, and laboratory activities. Each of the examples presented provides a backdrop for the broader aims of (1) highlighting various capabilities of Desmos, (2) discussing pedagogical design principles, (3) and sharing both our successes and lessoned learned.   

Live

In this study, I investigate how a community of high school teachers forms as part of an innovative online Master of Physics with Teaching Emphasis (MPTE) program. The MPTE program coursework requirement entails regular interactions through participation in the problem and reading discussion boards. The design features of the course, such as instructional prompts to guide students' navigations through the course content, can influence community participation. I will discuss the participation themes that emerge as a result of the course features using the Community of Practice (CoP) theory. Application of the social network analysis to the discussion posts revealed more fluctuations in the problem discussion board activities compared to the reading discussion board.