Collaborative Research: Community Sourcing Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences

生命科学物理学入门网站每年将通过提供引人入胜和有效的生命科学教学材料并帮助生命科学教师使用这些材料来加强对数十万生命科学学生的教育。该门户最初包含多个NSF资助的研究和开发项目的材料，将成为IPLs课程的开发平台。该网站将作为档案和传播工具，包括为教师提供课程建设接口。将支持教师创建创新和个性化的课程，根据他们的需要混合和匹配来自多种来源的课程，为传统教科书提供灵活和低成本的替代方案。该项目的许多目标和特点都是创新的。三个重叠的研究团队将开展这项工作：以用户为中心的设计团队，教学内容设计团队，以及社区建设和专业发展团队。该项目的重点是吸引和扩大三个社区：(1)物理和生物教育研究人员，(2)公共图书馆的贡献者，以及(3)希望使用和改编现有公共图书馆材料的公共图书馆的采用者。将通过研讨会、在线支持社区和研究相结合的方式合并和扩大这些社区的努力，以促进对IPLS教育的教师专业发展的理解。一旦开发了IPLS-门户基础设施，就可以用来为其他STEM学科提供社区采购环境。

The Introductory Physics for Life Science (IPLS) Portal will enhance the education of hundreds of thousands of life science students each year by providing engaging and effective IPLS instructional materials and helping IPLS instructors use these materials. This collaborative effort of the American Association of Physics Teachers and eight colleges and universities, including a community college and a Hispanic-serving institution, will create an open-source, peer-reviewed, and innovatively structured environment for IPLS content. Initially containing materials from multiple NSF-funded research and development projects, the Portal will become a development platform for IPLS curricula. The site will serve as both an archive and a dissemination tool, including a course-building interface for faculty. Instructors will be supported in creating innovative and individualized courses, mixing and matching from multiple sources tuned to their needs, offering a flexible and low-cost alternative to traditional textbooks. Many of the objectives and features of the project are innovative. Hence, the project also includes research components of four critical and interacting elements: IPLS content, IPLS pedagogy, the organizational structure of the site, including tagging and taxonomy of all elements for appropriate selection to meet the needs of individual users, and the user interface. Three overlapping research teams will carry out this work: the User-Centered Design team, the Instructional Content Design team, and the Community-Building and Professional-Development team. This project focuses on engaging and expanding three communities: (1) physics and biology education researchers, (2) IPLS contributors, and (3) IPLS adopters wanting to use and adapt existing IPLS materials. Merging and expanding the efforts of these communities will occur through a combination of workshops, online support communities, and research to advance the understanding of faculty professional development for IPLS education. The IPLS-Portal infrastructure, once developed, could be used to provide a community-sourcing environment for other STEM disciplines.