BMACC: Blended, Multimodal Access to Computational Physics Curricula

智力优势：计算科学与工程（CSE）是通过计算机模拟解决科学和工程问题的技术，工具和知识的多学科组合。计算物理（CP）是CSE的一个分支学科。现代物理学也需要理解计算。CP课程结合了物理学、计算机科学（CS）和应用数学，提供了比物理学更广阔的视角，而且通过包含其他计算科学通用的工具集，它开辟了多种智力路径。该项目通过提供基于问题解决范例的CP课程材料，打开了计算黑箱。这些材料支持平衡、有效和高效的本科教育方法，为学生的职业生涯做好准备。在过去的十年中，美国国家科学基金会的支持导致了俄勒冈州立大学五门课程、四本教科书和一个新的CP学位课程的发展。本项目通过视频讨论来扩充这些材料，将所有材料转换并合并为电子形式，允许多模式和多层访问，并开展外展活动，鼓励和教育教师使用这些材料。课程材料的新形式可以混合到具有不同程度的面对面和对机元素的课程中。为适应当地的教育环境而改变混合方式的能力是提高课程有效性的有效途径。正在创建的CP材料的完整数字包是下一代教科书的典范，它承诺更容易获取，改善学习，成本更低，但仍然具有商业可行性，并推动了国家科学数字图书馆/comPADRE的CP收藏。更广泛的影响：目标是刺激本科教育的系统性变化，反映计算已成为所有科学的基本要素。虽然期望的系统变化已经在少数早期采用者中缓慢地开始，但该项目通过提供可用于各种计算科学课程的灵活和完整的教育材料，以及通过在物理、教育和计算社区中继续扩展活动，支持并加速了这一过程。尽管学生在计算科学课程中可能会少上一些科学课，但他们往往会在环境中更好地学习科学、计算机科学和数学，从而从课堂中学到更多。因此，这种方法的效率提高弥补了科学课数量的减少。此外，为了解决对社会重要的问题，在不同的背景下学习不同的学科，对那些比目前学习计算机科学或物理的学生更有效，也更有吸引力。

Physics (13) Intellectual Merit: Computational science and engineering (CSE) is a multidisciplinary combination of techniques, tools and knowledge to solve scientific and engineering problems through computer simulations. Computational physics (CP) is a subdiscipline of CSE. Modern physics also requires the understanding of computation. A CP curriculum, being a combination of physics, computer science (CS), and applied math, provides a broader viewpoint than normally found in physics, yet by containing a toolset common to other computational sciences, it opens up multiple intellectual paths. This project opens up the computational black box by providing CP curricula materials based on a problem-solving paradigm. These materials support a balanced, effective, and efficient approach to undergraduate education that prepares students better for their careers. Over the last decade, NSF support has led to the development of five courses, four textbooks, and a new degree program in CP at Oregon State University. This project is augmenting these materials with video-based discussions, to convert and combine all materials into electronic forms that permit multi-modal and multilayered access to them, and to conduct outreach activities to encourage and educate faculty in their use. The new forms for the curricular materials can be blended into courses that have variable degrees of face-to-face and face-to-computer elements. The ability to vary the blend to fit the local educational environment is a documented avenue for improving the effectiveness of a course. The complete digital package of CP materials being created is a model for a future generation textbook that promises to be more accessible, to improve learning, be less costly-yet still be commercially viable, and that advances the CP collection of the National Science Digital Library/comPADRE. Broader Impact: The goal is to stimulate a systemic change in undergraduate education that reflects computation having become an essential element in all the sciences. Although the desired systemic change has begun slowly with a small number of early adopters, the project is supporting and accelerating the process by providing flexible and complete educational materials that can be used in various computational science classes, and by continuing outreach activities in the physics, education, and computational communities. Even though students may take fewer science classes in a computational science curriculum, they tend to learn the science, CS, and math better when placed in context, and thus get more out of the classes. The reduction in the number of science classes is thereby compensated for by the increased efficiency of the approach. Furthermore, learning various subjects in context, for the purpose of solving problems important to society, is more effective for and appealing to students who are more diverse than those presently in CS or physics.