Upper Division Active Learning

A few quick points of discussion...

Physics has lots of beautiful models and a good lecturer can show students how everything fits together so nicely. In a pure inquiry class this structure is lost as students will not organize their thoughts into a structured coherent picture the way a lecturer would. There is a question of how best to mix exploration, lecture, notes and online resources so that students can build their own ideas but still benefit from the inherent structure of physics.

Ramon's class (say intermediate mechanics) is a 3 hour a week lecture course with no recitation section. Two or three times a lecture Ramon will do a think-pair-share type question. Questions like "here are your choices... what is the next step in this problem or derivation", "explain what each of the terms in this equation means" or "what is the dependent variable in this expression". Ramon's questions focus on understanding the real world meaning of mathematical expressions.

In the Space Physics summer school for graduate students and professionals Ramon also uses think-pair-share type questions. One focus of the summer school is to present a coherent picture of space physics from the sun to the mud. Ramon uses concept maps to see how well students are connecting the different sections of space physics (solar physics, ionosphere, atmosphere etc). Concept maps are big in medical school but are rarely used in other fields.

Lots of "radical" reform ideas for K-12 and college are really just the norm in graduate school. Inquiry learning is just a scaled back version of guided and independent research graduate students take part in.

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Ramon makes extensive use of peer mentors in managing student research projects. Senior undergrads will mentor new undergrads and grad students will mentor senior undergrads. The entire group (Ramon + 4 grads + 5-7 undergrads) will meet once a week, student groups (1-2 grad + 1-3 undergrad) meet once a week or two and Ramon meets with each student group every 2-3 weeks.

A wiki provides a very easy way to collect and organize all the group's information: meeting times, project statuses and successes/problems, data sets, to do lists. The wiki works because everyone can easily access and edit the wiki so Ramon does not have to moderate everything himself. Also all previous wiki versions are automatically saved so editing the wiki is not a nerve racking activity.

The most difficult part of undergraduate research is finding a piece of a problem suitable for an undergrad. Undergrads always work on a piece of a graduate student's project. New undergrads will be given a long term project, something where results are not needed for several months. As undergrads become more engaged in the group and show their initiative they are given projects with more sensitive time tables.