TYC PER-Interest Group

Overview
Past Sessions

Our mission is to strengthen Physics Education Research (PER) knowledge and engagement within the physics Two Year College (TYC) community, to promote and support work collaborations in PER.

See our Newsletter SPOTLIGHT

Fall 2024 - Journal Club Share-a-thons

Research on Physicist with Disabilities

Fri. Sept. 13 3-4 PM EST or 12-1 PM PST
More information and registration here

Engineering Education Research

Fri. Oct 4 3-4pm EDT or 12-1 PDT
More information and registration here

Teaching Introductory Astronomy: Sharing our strategies and a look at research

Fri. Oct. 25 3-4 PM EDT or 12-1 PM PDT
More information and registration here

Assessments and Equity

Fri. Dec. 13 3-4 PM EST or 12-1 PM PST
For more information and to register, click here

Links to access each session will be provided upon registration.

The Two-Year College Physics Education Research Interest Group promotes:

Public regular VIRTUAL events that include:
- journal club meetings to discuss papers on how people learn physics and how to improve the quality of physics education.
- presentations by TYC practitioners of PER, and PER specialists from the larger community.
- tutorials on research-validated teaching strategies, assessment tools and their data analysis.
- development of working groups: meetings to connect faculty with similar PER interests.
- presentations on ways to disseminate TYC-PER results, and available financial aid to do that.
Occasional workshops through the Continuing Professional Development Workshop (CPDW) program of OPTYCs, such as:
- assessment of student learning: exploring the uses of various forms of assessment to improve instruction.

"As a physics instructor I am deeply interested in the work done in Physics Education research and I wish I could also conduct some research in my own classroom. However, as a Two-Year college professor my teaching load is so heavy (15 to 23h per week in class, plus 5 office hours) that I cannot find the time to do that and I rely heavily on the conclusions and recommendations made by physics education researchers to guide my work." (TYC faculty)

Listen to this American Radio Works' podcast giving an introduction to PER.

Attend our meetings and get to know your community: journal club, PER presentations, explore the resources.

We encourage the administration of research-validated assessments, like FCI or FCME. We offer presentations on how to analyze your own data or how to contribute to an aggregated data set on TYCs. Stay connected through our meetings.

We would like to help connecting you with others that have the same research interests, including at 4-year institutions. OPTYCs offers financial aid for presentation of TYC-PER work at AAPT conferences.

Because good teaching and knowledge of PER go hand-in-hand...

a. What is PER and when did it start in the US?

b. What are the different branches of PER?

c. How does PER work?

d. Where to find PER papers?

e. What can PER do for TYC faculty?

f. Why this effort by OPTYCs to strengthen PER knowledge & engagement within the TYC community?

g. How to translate findings from PER to the TYC classroom environment?

h. How to find PER partnerships?

Most of our events will be recorded and posted on the AAPT-TYC YouTube channel, under the "TYC PER-Interest Group" playlist.

RESOURCES (not meant as an exhaustive list):

Where to find Physics Education Research (PER) articles?
- - Compilation in PER Central: https://www.per-central.org/wiki/PER_Journals
  - Physical Review Physics Education Research: https://journals.aps.org/prper/
  - The Physics Teacher: https://aapt.scitation.org/journal/pte
  - American Journal of Physics: https://aapt.scitation.org/journal/ajp
  - PhysPort: https://www.physport.org/?
  - Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings: https://www.per-central.org/perc/Proceedings.cfm
  - List of journals in PERbites
Resources or discussions that were practiced or collected by the TYC community (CPTYC) so far:
- - June 11, 2021, on YouTube: Presentation by Adrian Madsen and Sam McKagan on teaching resources available at PhysPort (www.physport.org) and its Data Explorer online tool to facilitate analysis of collected assessment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k4odAlgoTk
  - April 16, 2021, on YouTube: Journal club about the article "Demographic gaps or preparation gaps?: The large impact of incoming preparation on performance of students in introductory physics" by Salehi et al, PHYS. REV. PHYS. EDUC. RES. 15, 020114 (2019). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yt2DQVmi9w
TIPS for Journal club presenters
Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL): https://www.cirtl.net/
PERbites: https://perbites.org/

CONTACT (substitute AT for @):

Contact OPTYCs using our web portal
Join our TYC e-mail list for event announcements, opportunities, and a supportive community: tycphysics AT googlegroups.com
Engage in the TYC PER-Interest Group channel inside our TYC-physics slack community.

One-on-one consultation/conversation with a facilitator: This is another option open to the community, just contact us. We will do our best to problem-solve with you regarding TYC PER-Interest matters. In case we do not have the answers you seek, we are dedicated to connect you to those who know more.