I wanted to share with the online community the syllabus we've come up with for our Physics 495 course ("Teaching College Physics"). It's still somewhat a work in progress, and I will certainly post updates about how each class goes once the academic year begins. But here are the topics we plan to cover in our 10 week course (45 students total, 3 TAs):
As a graduate student at UCLA, I find myself TA-ing and teaching college-level physics and astronomy classes. This blog is intended to help me organize my thoughts and lesson plans. I will also report which activities seemed to work, which did not, and why. Hopefully it will be of some use to other teachers out there!
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Creating a New Teacher Training Course
In the UCLA Physics and Astronomy Department, we require all incoming first year students to take a course called Physics 495 - Teaching College Physics. This course is meant to give new graduate students a crash course in teaching before their first days in front of a class of students. We are currently in the process of overhauling the class and creating a new syllabus from scratch. The goal is to implement interactive teaching techniques that promote active learning, discussion, and debate. We hope that the first year grads taking the class will pass that experience down to the undergraduate students they end up teaching.
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