United States

Undergraduate physics students are often required to take a course in computational methods. I will describe an approach to presenting this course in a flipped format. The background lecture for each topic are moved outside of the classroom, in the form of YouTube videos embedded in interactive Jupyter notebooks. A Jupyter notebook is an open-source web application that combines formatted text, executable code, images, videos, and interactive widgets. A plugin for the notebook, called nbgrader, provides for automated grading of coded assignments. In class, students work in small groups to complete programming challenges, applying the techniques described in the videos. The first two assignments each week included built in automated tests, while the more challenging third assignment does not. This approach provides students with immediate feedback as they develop their coding skills, while also encouraging them to think of ways to debug their own code. Students also complete two larger group projects in place of a midterm and final exam. Surveys of student attitudes showed a preference for the flipped presentation when compared to a traditional section of the course, while learning outcomes were equivalent.

AAPT SM20

Teaching Computational Methods in a Flipped Format

jupyter

programming

python

flipped

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. The program featured plenary speakers, sessions, workshops and many special activities.

For more information please visit the 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting page at: https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/SM2020/index.cfm.


The purpose of the AAAI conference series is to promote research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foster scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners, scientists, students, and engineers across the entirety of AI and its affiliated disciplines. AAAI-23 is the Thirty-Seventh AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The theme of this conference is to create collaborative bridges within and beyond AI. Like previous AAAI conferences, AAAI-23 will feature technical paper presentations, special tracks, invited speakers, workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, senior member presentations, competitions, and exhibit programs, and two new activities: a Bridge Program and a Lab Program. Many of these activities are tailored to the theme of bridges and all are selected according to the highest standards, with additional programs for students and young researchers. 
AAAI is providing you with a conference planner, which you can use to help organize your itinerary of activities. This includes talks to attend in person, talks to attend remotely, breaks with colleagues and your site seeing activities. To access this conference planner, please go to [https://aaai-2023.takemobi.io](https://aaai-2023.takemobi.io).

In order to access this site, you need to register. If you haven't already, please register [here](https://aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI-23/registration/).


AAAI 2023

The purpose of the AAAI conference series is to promote research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foster scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners, scientists, students, and engineers across the entirety of AI and its affiliated disciplines.

technical paper

The essence of laboratory experiences is the gathering of data, analyzing data, forming hypotheses, comparing with models and theories, discussion sources of and estimating statistical and systematic uncertainties, and drawing conclusions, usually in the form of a lab report. All of these components have been replicated in a complete set of first- and second-semester laboratory online experiments at Michigan State University, which can be used to enable undergraduate students to obtain authentic laboratory experiences while staying off campus. The availability of these online labs is crucial, even in universities planning to resume on-campus teaching in the fall, because groups of students in high risk groups need accommodations to remain sheltered during the pandemic. All of these experiments do not need special software, can be run on a web-browser on any computer, tablet device, or even smartphone, and in this way do not contribute to widening the digital divide.

Hands-on Lab Experiences With Social Distancing

Numerical modeling is used extensively in astrophysics and -- when used in a classroom -- allows students to explore how models are built in physics in general and how model building is facilitated by computational methods in particular. It also exposes them to ubiquitous tools such as Python and Runge-Kutta. Using a relatively simple N-body simulation students are able to go beyond the usual Kepler's Third law introductory descriptions of orbital dynamics and examine 3-body and chaos effects. I will show some cases where students encounter questions which are central to the current state-of-the-art in planetary dynamics research.

Python N-body simulation of solar system dynamics

We have implemented a framework for personalized remote learning in an introductory algebra-based physics course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This framework, developed to address issues related to equity and inclusion, is based on a combination of strategies from physics education research and best practices in online learning. Our approach centers around the Gameful Learning pedagogy. Within this framework, we have incorporated several interventions including (1) the adaptive learning platform ALEKS for mathematical remediation (2) activities in metacognition and (3) a physics teaching-assistant managed “virtual help desk”. The implementation of this framework, materials developed, and experiences delivering the curriculum to a diverse student population during COVID-19 will be discussed.

Applying “Gameful Learning” in a Remote Introductory Physics Course

The Newton´s laboratory is an app created under Unity development platform (C and C ++ language) implemented to COLAF (Colombian Air Force) Cadets, whom allow them to go further in the researching field, improve their skills on the basic fundamentals of physics (Newton´s Laws) for applications in aerospace projects. Military personnel are undergraduate students who are subjected to a rhythm of life of constant physical demand, discipline, stress and mental development that are simultaneously complemented by academic training. The impact of the interaction of the cadets with this implemented tool, the contribution to their professional development and the future influence on the use of new technological applications in the training of the Colombian aerospace leaders are evaluated and the results are presented. This app was implemented as a way of supporting the education system due to the ongoin global pandemic.

Newton´s Laws app in Military School

We present our pedagogical experiences and practitioner recommendations for introductory physics undergraduate laboratories using the Scale-Up methodology, in the context of the sudden adaptation to the online teaching environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we focus on the challenges of implementing focused critical-thinking labs with a diverse student population and graduate teaching staff ill-prepared for such a quick and forced transition. Given the task of achieving pre-COVID-19 learning objectives without providing physical access to laboratory materials, we examine the demonstrated benefits and disadvantages of several tools, such as technology, university resources, communication methods, and leadership skills.

Remote Delivery of Introductory Physics Labs During the COVID-19 Transition Period

Canadian Universities suspended regular in-person classes around mid-March due to the growing concerns about the pandemics. At my Department, the switch to the emergency remote teaching proceeded relatively smoothly, with remote classes up and running within one week. The synchronous lectures and office hours were conducted via zoom. It helped that the asynchronous online homework already existed as a part of a regular course. Not surprisingly, the real challenge turned out to be a remote testing part. The talk will discuss the challenges of running a traditional exam remotely, and the pressing need for the meaningful alternative ways of evaluating the students while teaching remotely.

Lessons From Remote Testing

The physics education and computer science researchers at Ithaca College collaborated to develop a mobile application to provide students with a dynamic experience studying electric fields, a notoriously difficult topic. This study is the first in a longitudinal study comparing the impacts of the mobile application and paired worksheet activity to other learning tools including a laptop simulation and a worksheet-only activity. Participants include health science majors enrolled in an algebra-based physics class. The normalized gain in performance on a diagnostic administered prior to and after interacting with one of the three activities was used to measure the impact of each activity on student understanding. Student attitude was measured using a questionnaire in the post-activity diagnostic. The results show students prefer laptop activities as physics learning aids and students in the two sections, mobile application and laptop simulation, produced higher average gains in learning than those in the worksheet-only section.

Developing and Testing a New Educational App about Electric Fields

We present our experience of conducting first semester calculus-based introductory physics laboratories remotely in the Spring 2020 semester. Six laboratories were redesigned to give students maximally hands-on experience under the restrains of coronavirus stay-at-home conditions. The video analysis by using Tracker software was used to collect and process the experimental data for most of these labs. The lessons learned allowed us to confidently teach the full semester of the labs remotely the following Summer 2020 semester.

Teaching the Introductory Laboratories Remotely: Lessons Learned

Understanding the student experience with emergency remote teaching

Our Junior Lab requires four experiments per semester. In spring 2020 the final two experiments were done by students at home. They were asked to design their own experiments using available resources. Extra credit was given for an inventory of these resources, which varied quite widely amongst students. Details and computer code for one possible experiment was given to students: the use of mobile phone image sensors for cosmic ray detection. An alternative to the final experiment was to submit instead a white paper describing plans to develop an application of physics to the Covid19 pandemic; students were sent a primer on possible topics. Students were individually counseled on their projects by email and through Zoom meetings. The capacity of students to independently conceive of and execute experiments varied widely and revealed the need to better equip students with knowledge and skills to pose problems, deal with ambiguity, and work resourcefully with physical devices, materials, and supporting literature.

Teaching Computational Methods in a Flipped Format

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