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

提高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师和工作人员的技能。这个项目将帮助教师学习新的物理实验和技术，然后他们将教自己的学生。具体而言，该项目将支持每年在美国各大学举办一系列12-14次讲习班，为期两年，并将汇集专家导师和一小组教员参加者。教师通常会花2-3天的时间学习一个实验的细节，这样他们就可以很好地掌握它，从而有效地教授它。每年将提供至少25个不同的实验，涵盖整个物理课程的广泛主题。高级实验室物理协会（ALPhA）与美国物理教师协会（AAPT）合作，提供这些研讨会，称为实验室沉浸式，其范围将改善美国各部门的重要部分的物理教育目标受众是教师和工作人员的小型但至关重要的人才库，他们在第一年（BFY）介绍物理学之后教授实验室物理学课程。教授这些课程的教师经常被要求指导学生进行超出教师自身专业领域的实验。沉浸式的参与者将探索，类似于学生的经验，一个单一的高级本科物理实验室实验的各个方面。由于这组教师往往与他们所在机构的大部分物理专业学生互动，即使每个参与者每年教少数学生，该计划预计将影响全国相当一部分物理专业本科生。该项目由教育和人力资源局本科教育司和数学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.