Title

SCALE-UP Project: Student-Centred Activities for Large Enrolment Undergraduate Programs

Target Audience

All UOW academic and casual teaching staff.

Description

How do you keep a classroom of 100 undergraduates actively learning? Can students practice communication and teamwork skills in a large class? How do you boost the performance of underrepresented groups? The Student-Centred Activities for Large Enrolment Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) Project has addressed these concerns.

Materials developed by the project are now in use by more than 1/3 of all science, math, and engineering majors nationwide. Physics and chemistry classes are currently in operation, with biology, engineering, and oceanography adaptations in progress.

In this talk Bob will discuss the classroom environment, describe some of the activities, and review the findings of studies of learning in various SCALE-UP settings.

Course Delivery

This will be a hands on workshop

Presenter(s)

Dr Robert J Beichner,
Alumni Distinguished Professor of Physics,
North Carolina State University
http://www.ncsu.edu/per/beichner.html

About the presenter:
As a member of the Physics Education R & D Group at NCTU, Dr. Beichner's research focuses on increasing our understanding of student learning and the improvement of physics education.

Working from a base of National Science Foundation and computer industry support, he developed the popular "video-based lab" approach for introductory physics laboratories. A spinoff from the award-winning VideoGraph project was a study of how the visual perception of motion can best be utilized in instructional computer animations and how that information can be used by teachers of large lecture classes.

In a separate project, Dr. Beichner and his students are writing a series of tests aimed at diagnosing students' misconceptions about a variety of introductory physics topics. The kinematics graphing test developed by Dr.Beichner is now being used in high schools and colleges around the world.

His biggest current project is the creation and study of a learning environment supporting a new way to teach called SCALE-UP: Student-Centred Activities for Large Enrolment Undergraduate Programs. The project is part of Dr. Beichner's efforts to reform physics instruction at a national level.

Probably his most visible work along those lines has been the textbook that he co-authored with Raymond Serway. The 5th edition of Physics for Scientists and Engineers was the top-selling introductory calculus-based physics book in the nation, and was used by more than a third of all science, math, and engineering majors.

He is currently the director of the PER-CENTRAL project, working to establish an electronic "home base" for the Physics Education Research community. He is also the founding editor of the APS journal Physical Review Special Topics: Physics Education Research.

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