Disseminating Instructional Physics Labs - ALPhA's Immersion Workshops for Faculty Development

改善学生动手学习的一个重要但被忽视的组成部分是扩大教授实验室课程的教职员工的技能。这个项目将帮助教师学习新的物理实验和技术，然后他们将教授给自己的学生。具体地说，该项目将在两年内支持在美国各地的大学举办的一系列12-14次研讨会，并将把专家导师和一小群教师参与者聚集在一起。教员通常会花2-3天的时间学习单个实验的细节，以便他们足够了解它，以便自己有效地教授它。每年将提供至少25个不同的实验，跨越整个物理课程的广泛主题。高级实验室物理协会(ALPHA)正在与美国物理教师协会(AAPT)合作，提供这些被称为实验室沉浸式的工作坊，范围将改善美国相当一部分部门的物理教育。目标受众是在第一年(BFY)物理入门课程(BFY)之后教授实验室物理课程的少数但至关重要的教职员工。教授这些课程的讲师经常被要求指导学生完成超出教员自己专业领域的实验。沉浸式课程的参与者将与学生的体验类似，探索单个高级本科生物理实验室实验的所有方面。由于这群教员倾向于与他们所在机构的大部分物理专业学生进行互动，即使每个参与者每年都只教几个学生，这个项目预计也会影响到全国相当一部分本科物理专业的学生。该项目由教育和人力资源局本科生教育司和数学和物理科学局物理司共同资助。

An important but overlooked component of improving student hands-on learning is expanding the skills of the faculty and staff who teach laboratory courses. This project will help faculty to learn new physics experiments and techniques that they will then teach to their own students. Specifically, this project will support a series of 12-14 workshops each year for two years hosted at universities across the United States, and will bring together expert mentors with a small group of faculty participants. The faculty typically will spend 2-3 days learning the details of a single experiment so that they know it well enough to teach it effectively themselves. Each year at least 25 different experiments will be offered, spanning a wide range of topics throughout the Physics curriculum. The Advanced Laboratory Physics Association (ALPhA) is partnering with the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) to offer these workshops, called Laboratory Immersions on a scope that will improve physics education at a significant fraction of the departments in the U.S. The target audience is the small but crucial pool of faculty and staff who teach laboratory physics courses beyond the first year (BFY) of introductory physics. Instructors teaching these courses are often required to guide students through experiments that are outside the faculty member's own area of expertise. Participants in the Immersions will explore, similar to a student's experience, all aspects of a single advanced undergraduate physics laboratory experiment. Because this group of faculty tend to interact with a large fraction of the physics majors at their institution, even if each participant teaches a handful of students each year, this program is expected to impact a substantial fraction of the undergraduate physics majors in the nation. This project is jointly funded by the Division of Undergraduate Education in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources and the Division of Physics in the Directorate for Mathematical & Physical Sciences.