professional talks
Here you'll find posters, talks, and workshop materials that I've presented at professional and teacher conferences.
I can provide workshops and webinars for high-school and college instructors on the following topics:
The Gentle Art of Questioning: Clickers and Peer Instruction
Questioning is a central part of assessment and quizzing, but it can also be a powerful learning tool. How does a teacher use questioning effectively? How do we avoid asking questions that are too simple, too hard, too similar, or just not focused on the right thing? This workshop will focus on writing those questions that engage students, spark their curiosity, help recap material, give you insight into their thinking, or help them learn critical ideas from the discipline. Learn about different types of questions for different parts of the learning cycle, as well as the surprising power of multiple-choice questions to achieve critical thinking skills. In particular, the workshop will focus on the teaching technique of “peer instruction” -- a research-tested method of requiring students to discuss their answers to challenging questions with one another. Peer instruction is facilitated by the use of personal response systems (e.g., eInstruction “clickers”), but many benefits of the technique can be achieved even without the technology. Example materials here.
Make Clickers Work for You (General Introduction)
In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore tips and ideas for incorporating clickers into your particular class. Clickers offer a powerful way to increasing student engagement and improve learning. At the University of Colorado, we have transformed our classrooms by using clickers to promote peer instruction. We’ll show research results on the most effective use of clickers, and discuss common challenges. In particular, we’ll focus on the attributes of “great” clicker questions, discuss example questions, and share ideas on facilitating effective wrap-up discussions once all the votes are in. Example materials here.
Effective Facilitation of Clickers in the Classroom
We’ll discuss common challenges, share tips on getting students to productively argue and reason through the questions, and ways to encourage all students to speak up in response to questions. Participants will also get a chance to practice aspects of teaching through questioning. Example materials here.
Writing Great Clicker Questions
In this workshop, you’ll learn the elements of an effective question, and practice writing questions in our content area and work on improving them. You’ll get plenty of hands-on practice and feedback, so that you leave ready to try some new ideas in your course. Example materials here.
Teaching Faculty About Effective Clicker Use
Geared specifically for those involved in faculty development and support (e.g., instructional technologists, faculty excellence programs, or other faculty professional developers), this webinar will cover best practices in helping faculty to use clickers to enhance their teaching. The webinar presenter has been creating faculty professional development materials around clicker use for years, and will share tips and techniques — many based on research — for helping faculty to see the potential power of this technology and learn to implement it effectively. Workshop components will include: (1) best practices in clicker use, (2) resources available for faculty learning to use clickers, (3) research-based techniques for faculty development around clickers, and (4) working with faculty resistance and alleviating frustration. Example materials here.
What Do You Want Them To Learn Today? Learning Goals and Formative Assessment
Students don’t always learn what it is that we intend to teach them. In several science departments, faculty are addressing this gap by collaboratively deciding on just what it is that they want students to take away from a particular course or lecture. These learning goals have been valuable as a communication tool among faculty and between faculty and students so that everybody knows what the outcomes of the course are meant to be. Once these goals are written, it’s also much easier to write exams and other assessments. But writing clear learning goals takes some practice. In this interactive workshop, you’ll get that practice – in defining goals and designing assessments that address those goals. You will work in groups with faculty from similar disciplines to generate and analyze goals and questions, and will discus how to put ongoing assessment of your students into practice. You are encouraged to work on a class you are currently teaching, so you can apply the techniques immediately. Example materials here.
Connecting learning goals and assessments
How does a teacher use questioning effectively, both to assess understanding, and to help students learn what we want them to learn? How do we avoid asking questions that are too simple, too hard, too similar, or just not focused on the right thing? In this interactive workshop, we’ll get practice defining and sharing what we want our students to learn (learning goals). Then we will turn to sharing, analyzing, and designing assessments that address those goals. We’ll explore research-based tips and ideas for using questioning during class, as well as on exams and homework, in a way that allow us to achieve the full benefit of questioning –student engagement and deep learning. Participants are encouraged to bring notes on the goals and assessments (homework, exams, clicker questions) for a course that they will be teaching soon, to make the workshop most immediately useful. Example materials here.
What Every Teacher Should Know About Cognitive Research
In the past few decades, we’ve gained a wealth of information about how people learn. The results of this cognitive and education research can help us become more effective teachers. In this interactive talk, we’ll explore some of the main findings of cognitive research in a language accessible to everybody, and discuss how they can be used in our teaching.
Presentation Topics:
I'm available to give talks and colloquia on topics such as:
- Research on the effectiveness of clickers and peer instruction
- Research-based instructional techniques / physics education research
- Alternative careers in science
- Effective science communication to the public
- Effective communication of physics education research to instructors
- The use of interactive engagement in junior-level physics courses
- The use of clickers in upper-division science courses
Past Workshops & Talks
Below are the past workshops and talks that I have given.
- If you are looking for materials or handouts from past workshops, please visit the Workshops page on my blog.
- Slides from many of my past presentations on education research topics are available on the University of Colorado Physics Education Research group website.
- Handouts and slides from many of my past presentations on the use of clickers are available at http://STEMclickers.colorado.edu.
See below for my hands-on classroom activities.
| Workshops |
|
Talks |
•The Quasi-Linear Dynamics of a Career
in Science Education. University
of Oregon Women in Science Group, Portland, OR (November 11, 2011).
|
Posters |
• Learning About Teaching Physics:
A new audio podcast on physics education research for teachers.
S. V. Chasteen and M. Fuchs, AAPT, Omaha, NE (August, 2011)
and Ontario, CA (February, 2012). |
| Spectrum at Your Fingertips Your nails can be a fun way to show the different ways that colors can be categorized, and discus the arbitraryness of the ROYGBIV spectrum. You can also show different schemes for color mixing (CYMK and RGB). PDF |
 |
| |
|
| Rainbow Rice Rice can be dyed a myriad of colors and used in a variety of activities, such as the rice model of the atmosphere. Download PDF of activity. |
|
| |
|
| Wicked
Styrofoam of the West Styrofoam will rapidly dissolve (à la the Wicked Witch), when placed in acetone, but not in water. Starch packing peanuts, however, break down in water but not acetone. Covers concepts of solvents and solutions, polymer chemistry, and scientific observation. PDF |
 |
| |
|
| Digital
Sound Use free software to explore the shape of your voice and musical instruments, and examine an audio illusion. A great activity to go along with a sound or waves lesson. The realtime spectral analysis of the voice and instruments is deeply engaging. (1) Handout using TEEMS2 Soundgrapher, or (2) handout using Spectrafoo and Audacity. And here's a spectrafoo screenshot and Audacity screenshot. |
 |
| |
|
| Ferrofluid Visualize magnetic fields, and make cool magnetic art, with ferrofluid. Several alternate recipes are given, as well as some activities to do with the fluid. See me on Iron Science Teacher, doing a ferrofluid demonstration. (Real Media file). Activity PDF. |
 |
| |
|
| Juice
from Juice Using blackberry juice, iodine, and a few simple materials you can make a Graetzel cell -- a type of solar cell that mimics the process of photosynthesis. This is a fairly intensive laboratory activity. PDF Here is an old page with some other activities on solar energy. |
 |
| |
|
Links
Exploratorium Teacher Institute Providing professional development resources for teachers
Exploratorium Institute for Inquiry Introducing teachers to inquiry methods of teaching
Dr. Paul Doherty; Scientific Explorations and Adventures
Dr. Jill Johnsen; Material Science and the Nanoworld
Dr. Sebastian Martin Passionately curious -- explorations from Sebastian at the Exploratorium, including lots of photos, activities with light and motion, and physics and music.
Science Snacks Small-scale and low-cost versions of Exploratorium exhibits you can build yourself.
