Colloquium: Drs. Kanishka Marasinghe and Timothy Young

SCALE-UP: New Technologies and Pedagogy in Introductory Physics

SCALE-UP stands for Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies a program developed at the physics department at North Carolina State University. We will present strategies of this type of student centered learning applied to physics in the new UND SCALE-UP facility in room 61 O'Kelly Hall.

Two introductory classes University Physics I and II taught this spring semester 2013, will be focus of the colloquium "workshop." Participants at the colloquium will be engaged in the topics of orbital mechanics and Gauss's law. The use of other in-class technologies are discussed including webassign and student response devices. Student assessment in this new pedagogy has been successful, citing increases in understanding over traditional lectures of 15%. We are gathering data to assess student learning during this semester and will present anecdotal results. We suggest that students are more aware of what they don't know on a much shorter timescale then in traditional lecture courses. We will present methods of coping with teaching in this new environment.