August 23, 2023 Issue #13

SPOTLIGHT is the OPTYCs bi-weekly newsletter. It brings you OPTYCs activity updates, highlights from recent publications related to physics education, and news & resources for Two-Year colleges.

Upcoming events

• Workshop: STEP-UP: Careers in Physics September 9, 2023 from 12:00pm-1:30pm EDT.
  Learn how to implement the STEP-UP lesson on Careers in Physics. 

• Workshop: How Your Values Affect Classroom Experience September 15, 2023 from 3:30pm-5:00pm EDT. Explore your values and how they guide your teaching and your students' experiences

• PER Journal Club Discussion September 22, 2023 from 3:00pm-4:00pm EDT
  Join us to share what you do in labs in this discussion about best practices.

• PER Journal Club Discussion October 27, 2023 from 3:00pm-4:00pm EDT
  Join us to talk about physics for life sciences.

Announcements

• SPOTLIGHT is planning to add a section named "Reader's corner" that will feature contributions from readers. Please consider sharing comments, tips, ideas, resources you have come across or anything that you think might benefit your physics TYC colleagues.
  Contact me directly if you have any question or suggestion: karim.diff@sfcollege.edu

OPTYCs Programs

• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Change Teams: The goal for this two-year-long program is to create a capacity-building learning community among two-year college physics-related teaching instructors to support efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion for our students. We are now accepting applications for Cohort 1 (until Oct. 20, 2023).
• OPTYCs Leadership Institute 2024: The TYC Leadership Institute is an innovative fellowship specially designed for Two-Year College Physics faculty, aiming to develop and enhance their leadership skills. The application deadline is October 20, 2023.

Recent OPTYCs events

In preparation of its annual report, OPTYCs has surveyed participants in its various events. Here are some of their comments about the impact of OPTYCs:

Are your students actually thinking when they’re in class? We know that, in order to learn, we must first think. Let’s be clear here; I don’t mean “are your students actively doing stuff” in class. I mean, are they stretching their minds when engaged in a task? Are they being critical about what they know or don’t know? Do they ask good questions that further their understanding of the content? In his book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics (Corwin - Sage Publishing, 2021) education researcher Peter Liljedahl introduces the concept of ‘studenting’. This is analogous to ‘teaching’; as teachers, we engage in many different activities: classroom management, announcements, developing lesson plans, grading, engaging with students, among many other things. ‘Studenting’ may involve navigating relationships with classmates and with teachers, figuring out what is being asked of them, trying to beat the system, wondering if this will be on the test, and so on. As Liljedahl states, “studenting is what students do in a learning setting - some of which is learning. And much of which is not.” Students have been habituated into classroom behaviors: listening, taking notes, and practicing. However, students (us included) have not been habituated into thinking critically about open-ended concepts and figuring out how to create knowledge. The vast majority of students mistakenly believe that mimicking and learning are the same thing. And our school systems, from early elementary school to college classes, have been complicit in perpetuating this myth about learning. To disrupt this, Liljedahl recommends a multitude of practices that go against classroom norms, and therefore shake students (and dare I say, teachers) out of habits and into a new territory of learning. I’ll have more to share on these ideas in future issues.

Krista Wood was featured as the July "AAPT Member Spotlight"

This wonderful video was posted by David Jackson three weeks ago on YouTube. It challenges our common understanding of circular motion and would be a great addition to a classroom discussion of the subject.

• The American Association of Physics Teachers 
• Committee on Physics in Two-Year Colleges (AAPT area committee)
• Join the TYC Google group: Send an email to tycphysics@googlegroups.com
• PhysPort Recommendations about teaching methods, assessment, and results from PER
• PER Central A resource collection for physics education researchers 
• Physics Review Physics Education Research Fully open access journal for PER 
• arXiv Physics education The arXiv repository for physics education papers
• AIP Statistical Research Center Data on education, careers, and diversity in physics, astronomy and other physical sciences

optycs.aapt.org

The work of OPTYCs is supported by NSF-DUE-2212807.