Content Information

Living Physics Portal Content Information:
Help for Finding What You Need

Contributors to the Living Physics Portal include information about their materials that define the general format and usage. This information is designed to help instructors find and use content on the Portal. The Portal Editors review the information supplied by contributors for materials submitted to the Vetted Library to help ensure its accuracy and usefulness. 
Some of the terms used in these resource descriptions may be unfamiliar to users of the Portal. The listing below provides definitions of the materials and, in some cases, links to more information.

The information categories listed here are: 

Resource Types: Resource Types describe the nature of content or activities, usually related to how they are used as part of a course or learning module. Examples of Resource Types are lecture materials, homework, and labs.

Instructor Resource Types: Instructor Resource Types describe the nature of materials for instructors and what instructors can use these materials for. Examples of Instructor Resource Types are scientific explanations, pedagogical essays, reading/resource lists, and journal articles.

Skills/Competencies: Skills and Competencies describe generalized, higher-level student skills or learning outcomes. These are usually not directly connected to specific course topics. Examples of Skills and Competencies are dimensional analysis, building models, and designing/performing experiments.

Pedagogical Approaches: Pedagogical Approaches give more detail about how and why the contributed learning activities are used in classes. Most of these approaches are based on research into how students learn physics and how to improve the learning process. Understanding the important aspects of these pedagogies will help instructors use content from the Portal more effectively. Examples of Pedagogical Approaches are:Peer Instruction, Modeling, Tutorials, and Just-in-Time Teaching.

Equipment: The Equipment information provided by contributors to the Portal describes the physical resources needed to use the content, usually equipment used by students. It is assumed that instructors have access to standard A/V lecture equipment. Examples of Equipment are computers to access online resources and standard physics equipment used for lecture demonstrations or labs.

Resource Types:

In-class activity:

These resources provide or support extended-time activity/ies for students to work on during a synchronous class or recitation session. These activities take all or a significant portion of a class meeting, or perhaps more than a single class. Although questions or tasks for individual students may be included, in most cases In-class activities take advantage of the real-time nature of the class with small or large group interactions. Examples include tutorials and group problem-solving tasks.

Clicker question:

These are questions presented during a class using some form of student response system. They are used to help students and instructors gauge understanding of the material being presented. In many cases, these questions are designed to stimulate student-to-student or whole-class discussions. Finding Clicker Questions

Lecture materials:

These resources are sets of slides or notes that an instructor uses to present content and/or guide discussion during a class session. They provide examples of how an instructor organizes and runs presentations in his or her class.

Lab:

Lab activities involve students in the measurement and/or processing of data related to physical systems. Labs often have students performing physical experiments but also may involve working with existing data or generating data from numerical simulations. Labs develop quantitative skills used to explore real physical phenomena.

Demonstration:

Demonstration resources are used by instructors to present physical phenomena to students during class. Demonstrations are most effective when integrated with interactive student predictions and discussions. 

Video:

Video resources are used to present content to students asynchronously, generally through internet-delivered videos and audio. 

Pre-class assignment:

Pre-class assignments, meant for students to complete before a particular class meeting, are used to prepare students for the material to be discussed. These assignments can improve student learning in class and help instructors prepare class activities to better address student questions. (Example: Just-in-Time-Teaching)

Homework:

Homework problems or activities are meant for student work outside of class. Homework problems provide students with practice, reinforces learning, and extends content covered in class.

Exam problem:

Exam problems are designed to be given on an exam or quiz, usually during a fixed time-limit summative assessment of student learning.

Student reading:

Student reading materials are assigned to students to help them understand the course content. The materials may also be used to explain for students the course pedagogy, structure, or grading.

Project:

Project resources provide student activities that take an extended period of time, often one or more  weeks. Projects often involve work outside of class and reports and/or presentations upon completion.

Instructor supplement:

These are materials intended for instructors and not usually given to students. Examples include lesson plans, instructions for implementation of specific activities, overviews of the philosophy behind curricular materials, and solutions or rubrics for grading.

Restricted access:

Restricted access files can only be viewed by verified educators logged into the Portal. For example, this might be an answer key for a set of exam questions.

Instructor Resource Types:

Scientific explanation:

Scientific explanations are explanations of life sciences content for physicists, or other discussion of scientific or medical content relevant for instructors.

Pedagogical essay:

Pedagogical essays are discussions of teaching approaches, strategies, or philosophy.

Commentary:

Commentaries are opinion pieces offering a perspective or viewpoint relevant for teaching physics for life sciences.

Reading/resource list:

Reading/resource lists are general bibliographies of readings and/or resources for instructors.

Report:

Reports are formal documents or white papers summarizing a body of work.

Journal article:

Journal articles are papers published in a journal or conference proceedings that you have permission to share.

Presentation:

Presentations are slides, videos, or posters from a presentation at a conference or elsewhere.

Restricted access:

Restricted access files can only be viewed by verified educators logged into the Portal. For example, this might contain ideas you want to share with other instructors but not the whole world.

Skills/Competencies:

Dimensional Analysis:

Student understanding that many of the numerical quantities in mathematical models of science represent measurements in the physical world and not pure numbers. This includes skills such as the ability to check unit consistency.

Functional Dependence:

Student understanding of the implications of how a mathematical expression depends on a parameter or variable. This includes the application of proportional reasoning and scaling to physical models.

Limiting Cases:

Student understanding of the importance of considering special and extreme cases in order to check and make sense of physical equations containing parameters. This includes the ability to predict physical behavior of systems as parameters get very large and/or go to zero.

Multiple Representations:

Student ability to use the different ways of expressing physical knowledge, such as through words, equations, diagrams, graphs, and numbers. This also includes the ability to translate between representations and use them together for problem solving.

Estimation:

Student ability to use general knowledge of the world to develop quantitative estimates of the properties and behaviors of physical systems. This includes building intuition for relevant scales and determining which physical properties are significant and which can be ignored.

Intuition building:

Student ability to predict behavior of systems before making detailed calculations and to be comfortable with physics so that physics models and predictions feel natural and intuitive.

Building/Modifying models:

Student ability to build or adapt scientific models to describe, explain, predict, and control physical phenomena. This includes the understanding that everything in science is based on the use of models.

Using/Evaluating models:

Student ability to apply models to solve problems and determine the range of applicability and the limitations of physical models, what can be learned from them, and when they need to be modified. This includes the ability to decide what is important and what can be ignored in a scientific description and how these depend on the particular situation being considered. 

Error and uncertainty:

Student understanding that physical measurements have limited accuracy and precision and the implications of this when combining measurements. This includes the skills to determine systematic errors and propagate errors and uncertainty.

Designing experiments:

Student ability to create or use models applicable to physical measurements, hypothesize possible outcomes, and design the operation of the experiment, data collection, and data analysis.

Performing experiments:

Student ability to operate experimental devices, and collect and organize data in a meaningful way. 

Applying physical principles:

Student understanding that physics has powerful principles of broad validity that can be used to reason with and solve problems.

Analyzing experimental data:

Student ability to make sense of and extract meaningful information from experimental data.

Interdisciplinarity:

Student understanding of the value of physics, not just as applicable to biological systems but as a way of thinking that can help build understanding of biology.

Metacognitive skills:

Student ability to evaluate his or her own thinking and determine when it needs refinement or correction.

Pedagogical Approaches:

Peer Instruction / Think-Pair-Share:

These are collaborative, active learning strategies that engage students in small group discussions to help each other learn. Classes are structured as short lectures interspersed with conceptual questions for students that increase engagement and provide formative feedback on student thinking. Research-based best practice has students first think individually about a question, commit to an answer usually using a student response system, share their solution and analysis with one other or a small group of students, and then provide a final answer. The class responses can be used to guide subsequent activity in the class. Peer Instruction, Teaching with Clickers

Collaborative problem-solving:

These are student activities where interactive student groups or teams solve challenging problems or exercises. Questions and problems are designed to be sufficiently sophisticated, complicated, and/or open-ended to challenge a group and be beyond the capabilities of most individual students. Groups may be informal but research has shown the benefits of formally organized groups with assigned members, roles, and tasks. Groups are usually small with 2 to 5 members. Larger groups are sometimes used for case studies or simulated work environments. Facilitating Groups, Small Group Problems

Conceptually-oriented activities:

These are student activities to help develop and/or assess student understanding of basic physics concepts or principles and how they apply to biological systems. These activities generally make use of non-numerical questions, order-magnitude estimates, drawings, diagrams, or written responses.

Context-rich problems:

Context-rich problems typically involve open-ended and somewhat ambiguous physical situations requiring students to use real-world experiences to define and solve a problem. Problems may have incomplete information that require students to make estimates and decide on the concepts and physical models to be used. These problems may be designed for small groups or for individual students. Context-Rich Problems

Ranking tasks:

In ranking tasks, students are asked to order different systems based on the variation of one or more physical properties of the systems. Ranking tasks exercises stress conceptual understanding of physics and discourage a “plug-and-chug” approach. An example question might involve ranking the accelerations of systems consisting of different masses and forces. Ranking Tasks

Project-based learning:

Project-based learning engages students in longer-term activities. Students gain knowledge and skills by working on authentic, complex, real-world questions, problems, or challenges. Projects usually allow students to design the questions and approaches for answering them. These activities work best for projects that students find personally meaningful.

Guided inquiry:

Guided inquiry describes a range of activities in which students take partial responsibility to define the question, develop and modify an inquiry, analyze results, and generate new questions. Instructions for the activity allow interpretation and exploration by students rather than being prescriptive. Instructors act as facilitators in this process, Guided inquiry can be used in labs, classroom settings, or as group study. Guided inquiry activities are typically based on the idea of learning cycles and active learning.

SCALE-UP / studio / workshop physics:

Studio physics, and similar instructional approaches, place a strong emphasis on active learning through laboratory-based activities, peer learning, group work, and guided-inquiry. Lectures during class-time are either eliminated or greatly reduced and integrated with lab activities and small group discussions. In most cases, a specially designed learning space that facilitates student interactions is used. SCALE-UP Classrooms

Modeling Instruction:

A curriculum and pedagogy that integrates lab and lecture into a learning environment where students build, test, deploy, and revise physics models. The modeling curriculum focuses on a few basic models, organized to help students see physics as a coherent whole rather than a disconnected set of facts and equations. This is a particular example of guided inquiry incorporating a learning cycle pedagogy, small group discussions, and the deliberate use of modeling terminology to facilitate concept building. Modeling Instruction

Mathematically-focused activities:

Mathematically-focused activities engage students in mathematical processes, such as algebraic manipulations, derivatives, or integration. Mathematical skill building and/or connecting mathematics to physical meaning are integral and necessary parts of these activities.

Computationally-focused activities:

Computationally-focused activities have students employ computers and/or numerical computation learning physics concepts and solving problems. These activities include programming, interacting with simulations, or performing data analysis.  PICUP

Experimentally-focused activities:

Experimentally-focused activities have students interact with and perform measurements on real physical systems. These activities can be used both to build students’ conceptual understanding and to develop skills in experimental design, problem-solving, and the understanding of data.

Tutorials:

Tutorials are guided-inquiry activities, usually worksheets, used for student exploration of a topic using chains of carefully vetted questions. These activities are generally used in recitation sections by small groups of students collaborating to answer the questions. Instructors facilitate group discussions but do not provide direct answers. The questions and question sequence in tutorials should be developed through careful research on student responses and understanding of the topics covered. Tutorial Resources, UW Tutorials, Open Source Tutorials

Just-in-time Teaching:

Just-in-time teaching (JiTT) is an active learning strategy where students answer questions related to an upcoming class such that the instructor can review the answers before class. The instructor uses the students’ responses to customize the class lesson plan and address concepts and skills on which students need help. JiTT is also designed to promote student preparation for class and encourage students to come to class with well-defined questions. JiTT Book, JiTT Questions

Equipment:

No equipment needed:

Any student can use the resource with what they can reasonably be expected to have, such as pens/pencils, paper, and a calculator.

Computers / software:

Students will require computers to use the resource. The resource description should provide details if specific hardware and/or software is required for access or to perform the activity.

Everyday items:

Students will need materials and/or equipment that is easily found at home or in stores, such as hardware or grocery stores, to use the resource.

Standard physics equipment:

Students will use equipment found in most physics departments for demonstrations or student laboratories to use the resource. Examples include masses, dynamics carts, springs, sonic rangers, batteries, bulbs, and multimeters. 

Specialized physics equipment:

Students will need equipment found in some but not most physics departments to use the resource.

Standard life sciences equipment:

Students will use materials or equipment commonly used in life science research or applications.

Specialized life sciences equipment:

Students will need equipment used for specific life science research or applications.