February 29, 2024 Issue #24

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

• Scientific Reasoning Labs 2024 Workshop  March 1, 2024 from 3:00pm- 6:00pm EST
  In this free, virtual workshop, you will learn about a set of introductory college-level physics labs that help students develop scientific reasoning skills. Facilitators: Kathy Koenig (Univ. Cincinnati) and Krista Wood (Univ. Cincinnati - Blue Ash College)

• Parallel Pedagogy 2024 Workshop April 27, 2024 from 12:00pm- 2:00pm EST
  Parallel Pedagogy is a curriculum that introduces core concepts simultaneously, helping students apply physics to different scenarios. This workshop is intended for anyone interested in curricular changes that guide students away from approaching problem-solving as plug-and-chug problems and towards improved applications of physics concepts. Facilitators  Dean Stocker (University of Cincinnati - Blue Ash College) Pete Schwartz (California Polytechnic State University) Jennifer Klay (California Polytechnic State University)

Recent OPTYCs events

• February 10, 2024 Workshop: Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) 

• February 21, 2024 Workshop: Energy First Approach

In her book Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers, Jessamyn Neuhaus describes five necessities to improve teaching. The first is awareness about the learning process, and that this requires struggle and failure - learning is hard work, and we should recognize that for our students. Learning is difficult work because it requires creating new neural pathways. To successfully learn, we often need to break down old, comfortable pathways, then rebuild. This takes time, effort, and much failure. Being aware of this arduous process, and supporting our students as they endure it in our classes, is a necessary step towards success. Allowing students to fail productively, such as giving them multiple opportunities for a test or to revise assignments, normalizes the struggle and actually provides learning opportunities. The process need not be onerous for you; one strategy the author uses is to provide constructive feedback on the first attempt, and the second attempt is graded purely on how well the student improved based on that feedback.

https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/easyblog/aftershocks-how-pandemic-affected-community-college-finances.html

Opinion: Physics Needs Community Colleges Kris Lui and Sherry Savrda discuss the role of Community Colleges in physics education and note that: While the physics community has long sought and struggled to diversify its ranks, it has too frequently looked right past an indispensable tool — community colleges.

• 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.