Related papers: Vision and change in introductory physics for the …
A central goal of Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences (IPLS) is to prepare students to use physics to model and analyze biological situations, a skill of increasing importance for their future studies and careers. Here we report our…
A goal of Introductory Physics for Life Sciences (IPLS) curricula is to prepare students to effectively use physical models and quantitative reasoning in biological and medical settings. To assess whether this goal is being met, we…
Physics has a reputation among majority of life sciences students for being very complicated and tough. If we leave students with this impression, it is likely that students see physics class as useless and irrelevant to life sciences.…
We present outcomes from curricular changes made to an introductory calculus-based physics course whose audience is primarily life science majors, the majority of whom plan to pursue post-baccalaureate studies in medical and scientific…
In response to increasing calls for the reform of the undergraduate science curriculum for life science majors and pre-medical students (Bio2010, Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians, Vision & Change), an interdisciplinary team has…
In an Introductory Physics for Life Science (IPLS) course that leverages authentic biological examples, student ideas about entropy as "disorder" or "chaos" come into contact with their ideas about the spontaneous formation of organized…
In this paper, we describe how we transformed our large-enrollment introductory physics sequence for life-science students to a Lecture/Studio format and aligned the physics concepts with authentic biological applications. We have reformed…
This paper describes our large reformed introductory physics course at UC Davis, which bioscience students have been taking since 1996. The central feature of this course is a focus on sense-making by the students during the five hours per…
We present an investigation into the interdisciplinary role of physics in a physics-for-non-physicists course at Pomona College. This work is guided by prior research into introductory physics for life-science (IPLS) courses, but attends to…
We have designed an introductory laboratory course that engaged first-year undergraduate students in two complementary types of iteration: (1) iterative improvement of experiments through cycles of modeling systems, designing experiments,…
In the U.S., introductory calculus-based courses often acts as a gatekeeper to STEM degrees. But access to the prerequisite math is far from equal--students from low-income and racially marginalized communities are far less likely to have…
It has been reported that students often leave the introductory physics classroom believing that physics is less connected to the real world than when they entered. In this paper we aim to complicate that narrative by considering students'…
We offer second year students the opportunity to explore Current Topics in Biophysics in a course co-taught by a physicist and a biologist. The interdisciplinary course allows university students to engage in analytical thinking that…
We report on a project to introduce interactive learning strategies (ILS) to physics classes at the Universit\'e Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC), one of the leading science universities in France. In Spring 2012, instructors in two large…
We discuss an inquiry-based curriculum that has been developed specifically for the introductory algebra-based physics course, taking into account the needs, backgrounds, learning styles and career goals of the students in that class. The…
In a previous study, students' self-expressed learning orientations towards an exercise centered on self-monitoring one's ability to solve a pre-lab physics problem were identified from a post-test feedback survey given to an introductory…
There is some evidence that conceptual inquiry-based introductory physics lab curricula, such as RealTime Physics, may improve students' understanding of physics concepts. Thus, these curricula may be attractive for instructors who seek to…
Smartphone-integrated physics laboratories (SmartIPLs) have emerged as a cost-effective and scalable approach that offers new opportunities for enhancing introductory physics education. By leveraging the sensing, imaging, and computing…
Most STEM students experience the introductory physics sequence in large-enrollment (N $\gtrsim$ 100 students) classrooms, led by one lecturer and supported by a few teaching assistants. This work describes methods and principles we used to…
Improving the scientific literacy of non-scientists is an important goal, both because of the ever-increasing impact of science and technology on our lives, and because understanding science enriches our experience of the natural world. One…