October 18, 2023 Issue #17

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

• 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.
  

• Journal Club November 2023 November 17, 2023 from 3:00pm- 4:00pm EST
  Join us for the PER Interest Group's November Journal Club discussion as we continue discussing introductory physics labs. The theme for this month’s meeting will be lab assessments beyond the traditional formal lab report.
  

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

• October 7, 2023 Everyday Actions Workshop (Making your class more inclusive)

When you think about the competencies students need to be successful, chances are that your list includes: perseverance, willingness to take risks, and ability to collaborate. In his book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics (Corwin - Sage Publishing, 2021) education researcher Peter Liljedahl has found that, while almost all educators place high  value on these competencies, few assess them. Results from his research show that using simplified rubrics, especially ones that are co-created with students, can help communicate and assess what we value. The usual assessment rubrics tend to have specific skills/attributes/topics in rows, with different levels of achievement as columns, and each cell contains a nuanced description of this particular skill level. These are difficult to interpret, tend to overwhelm, and are too nuanced to be useful. Lilhedahl suggests a continuum rubric for each task/topic/skill, with a single arrow across the top (instead of levels of achievement categories) and a list of attributes for ‘bad’ at one end and a corresponding one for ‘good’ at the other end. This way, the rubric can be used to both assess where a student is on this one particular task/topic/skill, AND the student can immediately see what and how they can improve. For formative work, a more traditional rubric could be used. For example, homework or a practice test could include a matrix rubric (containing rows of topics, and columns of levels of achievement) and list the question number in each cell. Students can self-assess: for topic X, they are only at a ‘basic’ level, while for topic Y, they are ‘advanced’. More nuanced ways of self-assessing are discussed in the book, helping students towards better metacognition.

The Value of Community Colleges: Recent Students’ Motivations and Outcomes

The Strada Education foundation conducted a survey of 1,139 individuals who attended a community college within the past 10 years and are not currently enrolled. The report, available here, claims that 

Discussions of the value of community college often center on completion or transfer rates. In this report, we add a new perspective to the topic by examining the performance of community colleges from the point of view of the students who attended them, focusing on recent students’ perceptions of value and goal fulfillment.

Here are some of the key findings:

• How to Strengthen Computing Instruction in the Physics Classroom This APS News column describes the work done by Danny Caballero and his colleagues at Michigan State University to implement computing in physics classrooms
• When learning physics mirrors doing physics Eugenia Etkina from Rutgers University describes the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach to learning and teaching physics she developed.

• 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.