Physics is humanity’s attempt to understand the grand puzzle that is our universe. As a physics educator, my first goal is to highlight which pieces of this puzzle students will discover in the class I am teaching. My second goal is to provide satisfactory answers to not only what we know, but also how we know it and how we can apply it. Finally, I aim for students to develop physical intuition, as well as practical skills they will use through their student and professional life in my classes.
Experience
My experience as an educator started in college as a volunteer in particle physics outreach activities and continued with Teaching Assistant (TA) roles in introductory physics laboratories in graduate school. Following that I was an Instructor of Record for Duke’s Optics and Modern Physics course as an Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Instructional Fellow. This is a bridge course between introductory physics courses and more specialized junior and senior level courses, typically having a roster of 30 students from physics and engineering departments. I find this course extremely rewarding for both the teacher and the students, as it introduces brand new concepts to students such as special relativity and quantum mechanics.
Method
In order to achieve my first goal, I start my lectures with a question that students should be able to answer after the lecture. For example, before starting a lecture on blackbody radiation and atomic spectra in my Optics and Modern Physics course, I asked my students about the difference between a neon lamp and a light bulb . Once the students have these questions in their minds, they have a learning objective from this lecture. I find students are more likely to actively participate after such a start and come up with their own questions related to the original question.
While teaching fundamental physics concepts is my main goal, the importance of cultivating skills and physical intuition in students cannot be overstated. In my Modern Physics course, students obtained practical skills ranging from coding to scientifically reporting their results through the laboratory component. In my problem sets, students learn how to divide a hard problem into small bits and how to check whether their answers are reasonable. I find it useful to prepare a simple problem and present it with an outrageously wrong answer, and let students use their intuition to figure out why the answer is wrong without making any calculations.
I like to change the pace in my lectures occasionally to focus on experimental verification of physical models and their applications instead of just concepts and theoretical knowledge. This gives students a chance to appreciate that physics is an experimental science and encourages them to inquire about the experimental evidence when learning a new subject. The best way to let students connect experiment and theory in physics is to have laboratory sessions, where students are able to observe the phenomena discussed in lectures. During laboratory sessions, students actively engage with the material and apply the methods they learned, often realizing they have more questions about the material. I coordinated with a laboratory instructor to provide a laboratory component to the Modern Physics course I was teaching.
I assess student learning via weekly problem sets as well as questions I get during my regular office hours. I always design original problem sets which require students to apply a principle covered in the class to a different situation with some guidence. This highlights the students’ ability to construct new equations according to a new situation, rather than picking and using equations from the lecture materials. For example, in my Modern Physics class after I covered Michelson interferometer during special relativity lectures, I assigned a problem about measuring the refractive index of air with a Michelson interferometer. I balance these more challenging problem sets by being available and approachable, so that students always have an opportunity to seek guidance.
Development
My current teaching practices are informed by my observations as a teaching assistant. For example, when holding office hours and grading exams I have realized students struggle to evaluate whether their answers are reasonable. In my Modern Physics course, I introduced students with tools such as dimensional analysis and investigating the limiting cases to improve their ability to judge their answers. In the future, I will improve my teaching abilities based on student feedback. My additions to the standard Modern Physics curriculum resulted in me being evaluated as a good, fair but also tough teacher. I will prune my future courses carefully to still intellectually challenge the students while making sure the workload is manageable. To further grow as a teacher and get perspectives outside my discipline, I am enrolled in Duke University’s Certificate of College Teaching program.
At the end of the day, I want my students not to walk away from my course with facts and equations; but with conceptual understanding, curiosity and skills to find out more about the universe themselves.