[Previous] | [Session 19] | [Next]
T. McKay (University of Michigan)
The problem of disseminating scientific knowledge to the broader community in an effective and efficient way is always with us. At the University of Michigan we have been addressing this problem in several ways. Every year we teach introductory physics to about 3000 students. We believe that, in addition to a pedagogical responsibility, this is an important opportunity for outreach. We report on a variety of approaches to active learning in large lecture classes which are aimed at aiding student comprehension of conceptual material. These have the side affect of improving their general impression of science.
In addition to the traditional classroom, we have also engaged in a broader outreach program through the Saturday Morning Physics lecture series, which through a combination of programming and advertising draws audiences of 250 a week to 15 weeks of lectures on topics of current research. We conclude with some general observations about the relation between the success of these public lectures and our large lecture classes.
This work is supported by a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, the University of Michigan, and the Ted Annis Foundation.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://www.physics.lsa.umich.edu/saturday. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: tamckay@umich.edu