| NSF Org: |
DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | March 22, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | March 22, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1645003 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
R. Corby Hovis
chovis@nsf.gov (703)292-4625 DUE Division Of Undergraduate Education EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | March 15, 2017 |
| End Date: | February 29, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $49,998.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $49,998.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1 PHYSICS ELLIPSE FL 5 COLLEGE PARK MD US 20740-3841 (301)209-3311 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
MD US 20740-3841 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
IUSE, Integrative Activities in Phys |
| Primary Program Source: |
04001718DB NSF Education & Human Resource |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
An important but overlooked component of improving student hands-on learning is expanding the skills of the faculty and staff who teach laboratory courses. This project will help faculty to learn new physics experiments and techniques that they will then teach to their own students. Specifically, this project will support a series of 12-14 workshops each year for two years hosted at universities across the United States, and will bring together expert mentors with a small group of faculty participants. The faculty typically will spend 2-3 days learning the details of a single experiment so that they know it well enough to teach it effectively themselves. Each year at least 25 different experiments will be offered, spanning a wide range of topics throughout the Physics curriculum.
The Advanced Laboratory Physics Association (ALPhA) is partnering with the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) to offer these workshops, called Laboratory Immersions on a scope that will improve physics education at a significant fraction of the departments in the U.S. The target audience is the small but crucial pool of faculty and staff who teach laboratory physics courses beyond the first year (BFY) of introductory physics. Instructors teaching these courses are often required to guide students through experiments that are outside the faculty member's own area of expertise. Participants in the Immersions will explore, similar to a student's experience, all aspects of a single advanced undergraduate physics laboratory experiment. Because this group of faculty tend to interact with a large fraction of the physics majors at their institution, even if each participant teaches a handful of students each year, this program is expected to impact a substantial fraction of the undergraduate physics majors in the nation. This project is jointly funded by the Division of Undergraduate Education in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources and the Division of Physics in the Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The Advanced Laboratory Physics Association's (ALPhA's) Laboratory Immersion program is a unique set of workshops that exist to improve the hands-on experimentation skills of undergraduate physics students. The Immersions target the relatively small number of college and university faculty who teach physics laboratory courses that occur after the first-year introductory sequence of courses. At an Immersion, those faculty spend 2 to 3 days learning in detail about one new experiment that they are considering including in their own courses. They spend that time working through the experiment just as students would, learning all the pitfalls that students might run into. At the Immersion, the faculty work under the guidance of a mentor who has taught that experiment themselves and can provide expert help along the way. Through the Immersions, faculty can learn experiments in areas of physics that are outside their own area of expertise.
Over the 10 years that this program has existed, faculty and staff from over one-third of all U.S. colleges and universities that offer undergraduate degrees in physics have attended at least one Immersion. Nearly 50% of the faculty report that they have implemented the experiment at their school within just 18 months, while others take a bit longer due to funding or other complications.
The results show that this program ends up impacting the education of a substantial fraction of all the undergraduate physics students in the country - providing new opportunities for the students to gain hands-on experience in laboratory work.
Over the course of this grant's support, the program has been extended into regions of the country that had not hosted Immersions previously, broadening the impact further. In addition, a highly successful trial was made of a collaboration with the Partnership for Integrating Computation in Undergraduate Physics (PICUP) - where faculty not only learned an experiment, but also learned how to have students mathematically model the experiment using computer simulations.
Last Modified: 03/30/2020
Modified by: Lowell Mccann
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