June 11, 2026 Issue #60

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

You can find a list of upcoming events and of the recordings of past events on the OPTYCs calendar.

Upcoming events

• The Physics Show August 28, 2026 from 3:00pm - 5:00pm EDT 
  Since 2007 the Foothill College Physics Department has hosted The Physics Show, a demo show for the public. In this workshop we will discuss the history and development of our program, how the moving parts work together, and will provide advice and guidance on how any physics department can create a successful outreach program like ours. Facilitators: Frank Cascarano and David Marasco (Foothill College, CA)

• Movie and Cartoon Physics 2026 September 12, 2026 from 1:00pm - 3:00pm EDT 
  Find out how you can integrate topics like Kinematics, Force & Motion, Conservation of Momentum, and others into your teaching that will hook your students and motivate them to want to solve physics problems.Workshop participants will break down scenes from movies and cartoons like Dodgeball, The A-Team, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Incredibles, and more! Participants will learn how observation and critical thinking skills can help gather helpful information from a scene in order to evaluate whether or not Hollywood got it "right". Facilitator: Kenric Davies (Texas A &M)

• The Energy Budget Activity October 10, 2026 from 1:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
  In this two-hour Zoom workshop, I will introduce the Energy Budget to you and then break you up into small groups with colleagues to complete the Energy Budget as student groups would.  After that we will get back together and discuss what you learned from the exercise and how this can be tied into your classes. Facilitator: Greg Mulder (Linn-Benton Community College)

• Physics of the Arts 2026 October 31, 2026 from 12:00pm - 2:00pm EDT 
  This workshop is focused on helping teachers bring more examples of the creative arts to their conceptual or general physics courses. During this workshop participants will learn about physics lab activities that take place in different arts studios, and work collaboratively to turn their ideas into an activity. Facilitator: Renee Lathrop (Dutchess Community College)

• Exam Advantage 2026 November 14, 2026 from 12:00pm - 2:00pm EST
  Co-PI Greg Crowther will lead an interactive workshop on Exam Previews, a framework in which students receive extensive information about exams before taking them, enabling them to tackle in-class exams that would otherwise be unfairly complex. After learning about the two main "flavors" of Exam Previews -- Test Question Templates (TQTs) and Public Exams -- participants will work in small groups to create samples of Exam Preview materials suitable for their own introductory physics courses. Facilitator: Greg Crowther (Everett Community College, WA)
  
  

Recent events

“To develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned.” This is the fifth principle discussed in How Learning Works: 8 Research-based Principles for Smart Teaching (by Marsha C. Lovett, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Susan A. Ambrose, Marie K. Norman;Jossey-Bass) As experts, we often are unaware of the component skills that go into solving a physics problem; we have developed a complex organization system for knowledge, read concepts as associated ‘chunks’, and easily hone in on relevant ideas. For our students, who may only be learning, and practicing, individual concepts or skills, the act of combining them is an extra hurdle. The authors present a continuum of mastery: beginners are unconsciously incompetent (they do not know what they do not know), progress to consciously incompetent (where they are aware of not knowing), advance to consciously competent (during which they can do the task but it takes effort and concentration), and reach mastery where they are unconsciously competent. Experts, such as physics teachers, have achieved mastery, and are rarely aware of the cognitive processes and associated knowledge they use to accomplish a task. Our students, on the other hand are, at best, consciously incompetent when they begin our course. As instructors, our goal should be to help our students move towards conscious competence.

Learning physics can derail some students: New research shows the best way to keep them on track The article discusses a paper published in Nature Physics (paywall) that compares student conceptual learning achieved by various active learning methods: Peer Instruction, Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE), Tutorials, and Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies (SCALE-UP)

A Framework for institutional change in the age of AI An arXiv paper by David Perl-Nussbaum, Noah D. Finkelstein (University of Colorado Boulder)  "Generative AI is rapidly reshaping STEM higher education. Not only are our educational practices changing, but how we think about educational transformation must adapt". For a general discussion of the paper: CU Boulder researchers warn higher education AI change models are already out of date

• 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

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