United States

In this talk I will present a blueprint for decolonizing the classroom. Rather than adhering to the traditional classroom, we create an anti-hierarchical collective where the
most marginalized voices are prioritized. To achieve this, we implement the following key pillars: Justice education as one of the main ingredients in the curriculum. Community town halls to address and improve the classroom climate. (3) Accountability systems through regular (anonymous) surveys collected and evaluated by an
external paid expert. Community building events to build trust as a cornerstone for accountability and mutual solidarity. Adecolonizing physics and astronomy
symposium at the end of the semester, where the collective has an opportunity to share the lessons learned with the broader community. These methods are inspired by
Zapatismo (Chiapas, Mexico) and implemented at Pomona College, a selective liberal arts college in the United States.

AAPT SM 21

Decolonizing the Physics and Astronomy Classroom

collective

decolonizing

pedagogy

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technical paper

For large- enrollment introductory physics classes, this situation raises questions of ensuring academic honesty and fairness in assessments. Short, low-stakes quizzes have been suggested as an alternative to traditional exams, in order to minimize opportunity for students to engage in academic dishonesty by way of unauthorized online resources that can be problematic for longer online exams, and to reduce the pressure students feel that may tempt them to cheat on high-stakes exams. However, short quizzes could still be vulnerable to academic dishonesty by way of student sharing of assessment content with each other through various means that may be difficult to detect. Moreover, students may not perceive that short quizzes are meant to be low-stakes. It was found that students learning remotely had a preference for less-frequent, longer assessments, compared to frequent, short quizzes. It was also found that evidence for academic dishonesty was reduced when students perceived the assessments as fair.

Creating Honest, Fair, and Equitable Remote Introductory Physics Exams

In response to student difficulties with staying motivated during online classes, I eliminated exams from Introductory E&M and introduced a standards-based grading approach to the homework. The goals were to relieve stress and highlight that consistent motivation is key to success. This scheme was supported with points for participation and reflection of students' own approach to problems solving. The strategy that the students are asked to take to the class is also more consistent with how professionals address problems. The hope was that this would provide strong incentive to stay continuously engaged throughout the semester. I will talk about my implementation of this, how the students responded, and what I learned about student motivation and success.

Standards-Based Grading Without Exams For Online Instruction

The increase of textbook cost is a contributing factor in achievement gap. With the dissemination of open-source resources and utilizing online simulations it is possible to produce free customized learning tools for the students. Furthermore, online simulations give students perfect opportunity to further their studies, observe real-life application of Physics and check the answers of some model problems presented. At the Middlesex County College, using an OER grant, we completed an open-source workbook for the algebra based General Education Physics-I that has been used in classroom and for homework. Although there is an open-source textbook in College Physics by Open STAX, we have been relying on publisher's lecture slides. For the next step, we would like to compile original lecture slides that incorporates online simulations and workbook problems in parallel with the Open textbook. In this talk, open-source workbook, current work on slides, techniques for integrating the simulations and the challenges are presented.

Combining OER Resources with Online Simulations to Reduce Achievement Gap

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of US colleges and universities chose to continue teaching and rapidly switched to a new mode of instruction that we call Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). As ERT is different from traditional online learning in scope and intention, it is important to understand student experiences with ERT to better inform ERT instruction (and potentially more traditional instruction as well). Student experiences with ERT cannot be separated from the social and political strife that accompanied it (especially in the US), nor can they be separated from systems of oppression that discriminate based on gender, race, ability, and other factors. In this talk, we explore differential experiences with and impacts of ERT across more than 1700 students enrolled in college and university physics courses in the US in the Fall of 2020.

Students' Differential Experiences with Emergency Remote Teaching in Fall 2020

Computational Modeling is seen as one of the three pillars of modern physics by many. Surprisingly, it is not mandatory in many German school curricula and thus, few physics teachers use it in class on a regular basis. To increase awareness of computational modeling in the local physics teacher community and to investigate the effects of the use of computational modeling in combination with real experiments on students, a science lab was created, that combines computational modeling with an experiment and real-world data to tackle students’ preconceptions in Newtonian dynamics using the software Newton-II. Students from 11th grade take part in the science lab after having discussed Newton’s laws in school. The poster highlights the way in which computational modeling is combined with real world data in four different experiments and the effect of the lab on, among others, students’ conceptual understanding and preconceptions.

Improving Students’ Conceptions Combining Computational Modeling and Real-world Data

For decades, astronomy has been studied by undergraduates at colleges, with most of the astronomy courses being taken by general education students. Further, a total number of students that are enrolled in an introductory astronomy, either a cumulate or topical course, is approximately 200,000 students per academic year. During the Spring 2019 semester at the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI), across two astronomy courses, the Solar System (ASTR 1010) and the Stellar System (ASTR 1020) (Fig. 4), there are 12 course sections and 154 students enrolled. Critical barriers are difficult concepts of science education encountered by students identified by Hawkins (1978), “such as size and scale, air and water and beyond, heat, and elementary mechanics”. These are among the core concepts in introductory astronomy courses. Critical barriers would be likely more difficult to overcome if the student had a learning disability. Most of undergraduate students do not have a self-reported disability, and approximately 10% of undergraduate students report having a disability. One disability that would be very difficult to overcome in an introductory astronomy course is partial or full visual impairment. Astronomy education research is underway to be able to integrate introductory astronomy learning objectives into tangible materials to give blind and visually impaired people. However, limited activities have been initiated here at the Community College of Rhode Island. This project seeks to develop a curriculum kit for visually impaired students based on the content of the ASTR 1010 course to apply tactile, temperature, and sound techniques to determine if it is feasible for use in the introductory solar system course to accomplish the learning objectives of the course, outlined by the college. Our work shows that astronomy course objectives can prove to be difficult for visually impaired individuals to master. However, with extra time and instructor input, creative ways can be generated to ensure that the course learning objectives are met, as shown here, is possible.

Activities for Visually Impaired Learners in Introductory Solar System Astronomy

Chromaticity measurement is an interdisciplinary subject and is very complex. Color of object s could be measured accurately by using computer-software with the transmission spectra of grating spectrometer on the basis of the international standard, CIE-XYZ system. The colors can display directly on the computer screen. The experimental result s and theoretical analysis are presented in agreement also in this paper.

Chromaticity Simulation Using Software Program

We have recently restructured our first semester University Physics Laboratory to emphasize comparison of experimental and modeling results throughout almost all the experiments. The students, who also use simulation to a certain degree in the lecture portion of the course with the Matter and Interactions curriculum, write vPython code at glowscript.org to describe the fundamental physics of the interactions studied in the experiments. Students are provided a starter code for each experiment that performs the heavy lifting of creating a scene that resembles the experiment and setting up graphs of important parameters. The students focus on coding the fundamental force relationships as well the equations that integrate force to obtain momentum and velocity to obtain position. They write reports that focus on comparisons between experimental results, modeling outcomes, and theoretical predictions. In this poster we will present examples of several experiments and models that are used in this laboratory.

Integrating Simulation and Experiment in the WKU University Physics Laboratory

Our research lab developed the Model-Evidence Link (MEL) activities to support students’ scientific evaluations and judgements when considering alternative explanations of phenomena. For the present study, we tested two astronomy-related MELs--the Moon Formation preconstructed MEL and the Origins of the Universe build-a-MEL--in high school and preservice teacher classrooms. Students engaged in both these activities, completing embedded measures of their evaluations, judgements, and knowledge, pre- and post-instruction. We asked: How do relations between students’ evaluations, judgements, and knowledge compare between the preconstructed MEL and the build-a-MEL? Using a partial least squares structural equation model (SEM), we found that the preconstructed MEL had a stronger relationship between students’ evaluations and post-instruction plausibility judgments, but overall SEM statistical indices showed that the build-a-MEL was more robust in promoting students’ learning. Therefore, for the present study, the build-a-MEL was a better activity for facilitating more scientific evaluations, judgements, and astronomical knowledge.

Comparing Two Scaffolds for Evaluating Scientific Explanations

Teaching the introductory astronomy lecture and lab courses in the hybrid mode presents a challenge when it comes to the students’ projects and experiments. As part of the ALG supported class transformation, the web browser-based tools using Java Script were developed to assist students in projects that they can carry out by themselves or in small groups at home following the provided project description or a simple lab manual. The projects include observation and plotting of the Moon position and phase, and Sun rotation using satellite images and others. 

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Decolonizing the Physics and Astronomy Classroom

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