OPTYCs SPOTLIGHT 2025 Issue 47
April 24, 2025 Issue #47
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.
OPTYCs News
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Please take our annual participant survey You are being asked to complete this survey because you have participated in the Organization for Two-Year College Physics (OPTYCs; optycs.aapt.org). Your responses are very valuable for OPTYCs as the project leaders work to ensure that the activities are valuable for the two-year college (TYC) physics and astronomy communities. This survey is being sent just once per year to minimize your time. |
Upcoming events
- Textbooks 2025 - What does research have to say about what makes an effective textbook? What is the impact of textbook choice on student success? What factors make it more likely that students will actually use a textbook? In this PER-Interest Group session on textbooks, we’ll begin by reviewing some of what research has shown about textbooks and how they are used. There will also be time for a discussion of textbooks, with the opportunity for participants to share their insights with other TYC faculty.
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Hands-On Quantum: Teaching Core Quantum Concepts with Bloch Cubes -
Recent events
Kris’ corner
Tips, summaries, and musings from Kris Lui (OPTYCs Director).
By now, you should have received an invitation to complete the OPTYCs Annual Participant Survey. (If you haven’t, please contact me.) Please do this survey if you haven’t yet! We take the results seriously, and have made changes to what OPTYCs is doing based on past results. Just as important, the feedback you provide helps us show to NSF that we’re doing what we proposed to do; these annual reports that we submit to NSF are vital to continued funding. Not only for our particular grant, but for NSF itself to appeal to Congress for their budget each year. NSF has two main criteria: intellectual merit, and broader impacts. Our grant contributes to intellectual merit by advancing knowledge about effective pedagogy and practices for students taking physics and/or astronomy at two-year colleges. Our grant’s broader impacts rests in building and sustaining the faculty community and having positive impacts on student retention and completion. Having your testimony, through these annual surveys, gives us evidence to use for future funding, so we can keep the TYC physics and astronomy enterprise thriving within the national STEM ecosystem. In the past two annual participant surveys, we have had only 10% of OPTYCs account holders respond. We need to hear from everyone who has been involved, especially you! Please, please, please do the survey!
Teaching Resources, Professional Development & Student Opportunities
Resources
- 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
The work of OPTYCs is supported by NSF-DUE-2212807.
