Alice Churukian

Educator

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Pedagogical Methods Used

Peer Instruction / Think-Pair-Share, Collaborative problem-solving, Conceptually-oriented activities, Context-rich problems, Ranking tasks, Guided inquiry, SCALE-UP / studio / workshop physics, Experimentally-focused activities, Tutorials, Just-in-time Teaching

Education Research and Pedagogy Expertise

Course development. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the implementation of active-engagement in the classroom.

Describe the courses that you teach for life sciences students

The IPLS two-semester course sequence at UNC-CH is taught in the integrated Lecture/Studio format where students attend two 50-minute lectures and two 110-minute studios per week. Lectures and studios are interleaved such that students attend a large lecture section and associated smaller studio section twice per week. We refer to each lecture and its associated studio as a module. The courses are “department owned” in that they are not tied to a specific faculty member and cannot be changed without consensus.

What is your approach to teaching physics for life science students?

We created a suite of 54 modules, each consisting of studio activities (Physics Activities for Life Sciences), an interactive lecture, and assessment questions, all of which have been developed using the findings and best practices from PER. This suite includes materials for many topics that are important for life science majors, but are not part of the traditional introductory physics curriculum, including stress and strain, diffusion, chemical energy, and life at low Reynolds numbers.