October 6, 2023 Issue #16

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

• STEPUP 2023 Actions Workshop October 7, 2023 from 12:00pm-1:30pm EDT
  Join us as we learn how to implement the STEP-UP lesson on 'Everyday Actions'.
• PER Journal Club Discussion October 27, 2023 from 3:00pm-4:00pm EDT
  Join us to talk about physics for life sciences.

• TPT 2023 Workshop October 28, 2023 from 12:00pm-2:00pm EDT
  In this workshop, The Physics Teacher Editor, Gary White, will discuss the general publishing process, and also help you develop ideas you may have to submit to TPT. 

• AstroNotes 2023 Workshop  November 3, 2023 from 5:00pm- 6:00pm EDT
  Talk with Co-Column Editors Don Smith (Guilford College) and Janelle Bailey (Temple University) Co-Column Editors about how to write for AstroNotes the regular column within The Physics Teacher that focuses on astronomy content, lessons, and resources that could be useful for physics teachers whose main field of expertise is not astronomy.

• PALS 2023 Workshop November 4, 2023 from 12:00pm-3:00pm EDT
  The Physics Activities for Life Sciences (PALS) are carefully structured to take students from basic ideas and guide them towards mastery using thought experiments, simulations, and hands-on experiences using equipment that is common in physics instructional labs. In this workshop, we describe the evidence-based design of these activities, allow you to try out a few PALS, and show how PALS improved student learning gains on concept inventories.
  

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 October 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

• September 22,2023 Discussion of best practices in labs

• Women in Physics Lesson - STEP UP Workshop September 23, 2023

• Careers in Physics Workshop - STEP UP : September 09, 2023

There is much research and debate about forming student groups in collaborative learning environments. In his book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics (Corwin - Sage Publishing, 2021) education researcher Peter Liljedahl summarizes his findings on this subject and recommends that we “frequently form visibly random groups”. Form new groups for every class; this way, students are not inured to specific roles within a given group and thus are able to continue thinking. Make the groups visibly random; that is, students should perceive the randomness. Groups of three is the recommendation. One method to do this is to have students draw a card from a deck at the start of class; for a class of 24 students, you might choose three cards each from 2-9; use the fourth card for each of those numbers to indicate an area in the room for that group to meet as this will hasten transitioning to student groups.

NASA Community College Network

The SETI Institute’s NASA Community College Network (NCCN) is a major initiative to bring NASA Subject Matter Experts (SME), research findings, and science resources into the nation’s community college system. NCCN is a constituent team of the Science Activation program, part of NASA’s Science Mission Directive (SMD).

For more details: https://nccn.seti.org 

INCLUSIVE STEM TEACHING PROJECT

An online course designed to advance ability and awareness for cultivating inclusive STEM learning environments. Click on the image or the link above to learn more.

Recent papers

Developing a Physical Science Course Focused on Sustainability In this paper Sherry Savrda describes a course she developed to support a technical certificate in sustainability through an engineering technology program.

What is an attosecond?  Aaron W. Harrison, a physical chemist explains the tiny time scale behind Nobel Prize-winning research

Nobel Prize: Flashes of Light Catch Electrons in the Act A brief discussion of the research behind this year's Nobel prize in physics

ALPHA experiment at CERN observes the influence of gravity on antimatter

•  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.