Steve Pollock

Department of Physics

steven.pollock@colorado.edu
303 492 2495

[last updated 10/07]

If you haven't been there, please visit the Physics Education Research at Colorado website, which has links to much more than just this page!
Below are some documents and links for papers and projects I'm working on in Physics Education research. These are largely talks, links, and presentations: for education research papers it might be better to go to the PER@CU publications page
You can also return to the top level of the PER@CU page (Physics Education Research at CU), Or, you can visit the CU "Physics Learning Lab" page
You can find my generic CU home page here.

Teaching Resources

I have worked on a multimedia textbook, Thinkwell Physics I , a supplement or even replacement of a traditional text for intro physics. (120 10-minute "mini-lectures", with notes, animations, etc... )
I also produced two popular courses for nonscientists with the Teaching Company (one on particle physics, the other on classical physics)
Some possibly useful links for grad TA's
Some Concept tests for introductory physics
Here is a powerpoint presentation to a Faculty Teaching Excellence summer workshop group on the use of clickers in large lectures. [3 MB]

General PER Talks and papers

Here is a talk for the general public about PER (Saturday afternoon physics series)
Here is my powerpoint talk for the APS meeting, April 2006.
Here is a powerpoint talk given as a colloquium at KU, Spring 06
Here is a powerpoint talk given to Society of Physics students, Fall '05
Here is a powerpoint presentation to the Engineering Faculty, Spring '05 (with Noah F) [2 MB]
Kathy Perkins and I wrote an article for the the APS Forum on Education Spring 04 newsletter about education efforts in Physics at CU. (The FeD page is here )
I gave an invited talk at the ISSOTL '04 (1st International conf. for the Society of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Bloomington, Oct '04) Here is a pdf file [3.1 MB]

Student engagement in large lectures

During the 2000-'01 academic year, I participated in the Pew/Carnegie teaching scholar's program, which led to a lot of informal (SOTL) work in my classes.

Here is more information and references from my project on student engagement in large lectures.
Below are several drafts which arose from that project.
An unpublished paper on "Fighting the Fade: Student Engagement in Large Peer-Instruction Classes" , [Word doc, 120 kb]
A paper on "Understanding Student Disengagement in Peer-Instruction Classrooms" submitted to the proceedings of the 2003 Fermi summer school on Physics Education Research. [Word doc, 52 kb]
Here is some data from the large intro courses [pdf, 1Mb]
Here is a summary report from my summer 2005 Faculty Teaching Excellence Program project (to compile some teaching materials for "Sound and Music" and "Energy and the Environment")

Implementing tutorials, with use of Learning Assistants

Physics 1110/1120 (Calculus based intro sequence at CU) is instituting a completely reformed recitation section starting in Fa '03, based on University of Washington's tutorials . We are supported locally by a CCLI adaptation and implementation grant, PhysTec , and an NSF funded STEM-TP grant . The latter allows us to support undergraduate Learning Assistants who team-teach these tutorials. This involves a weekly Physics Education Seminar (content training), and a separate course in the School of Education for the LA's.

Here is my invited powerpoint talk for the APS meeting, April 2006, on preparing undergrads to teach (about our LA program).
Here is a powerpoint presentation from the 2007 Boulder Colorado Learning Assistant Workshop sponsored by PhysTEC/APS.
Here is an extended (2 hour-talks combined) powerpoint presentation summarizing lots of our reseach results spanning '03-'06.
Here is an article (Finkelstein and Pollock) published in Physical Review (PER special topics) on our implementation of Tutorials.
Here is a brief web version of a power point talk giving an overview of the Tutorials (and what happens when you stop using them) (Download the actual powerpoint file here [.25 MB] )
Here is a contributed powerpoint talk about secondary implementations of Tutorials, given at the 2005 ISSOTL (International Conf for the Society of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Vancouver) [ 1.3 MB]
Here is a web version of a powerpoint talk given Oct 5 '05 (Physics Brown bag lunch) discussing data showing the impact of Tutorials in introductory physics at CU. (Or, download the actual powerpoint file here, [1.5 MB] ) More detail than the previous bullet, but harder to follow if I'm not talking you through it :-)
Here are PERC conference papers on multiple reforms in intro physics from Summer 04 (mechanics), "No single cause:..." [pdf, 0.3 Mb], and Summer 05 (mechanics and E&M, comparing with and without Tutorials), "Transferring Transformations:... " [pdf, 0.2 Mb]
Here are AAPT posters with data on our multiple reforms, from Summer '04 (focus on Mechanics) [3 MB pdf], and Summer '05 (mechanics and E&M, with and without Tutorials) [.6 MB pdf]
A Prospectus on the use of learning assistants in Phys 1110, for the STEM-TP project. [Word doc, 32 kb]
A presentation to the STEM-TP meeting (Jun 18 '03) on transforming Physics 1110 recitations. [Word doc, 36 kb]
A second presentation to the STEM-TP meeting (Mar 17 '04) on transforming Physics 1110 recitations. [html from Powerpoint] (Also available as a pdf file which looks better but is large [7 Mb])
A report on our FTEP summer teaching improvement project [pdf, 303kb] (Pollock, Dubson, and Finkelstein, '04) to develop Phys 1120 tutorials and further analyze Phys 1110 tutorials
A primer on tutorials for interested faculty members at CU. [pdf, 64 kb]

Return to the PER@CU main page .
Email me at Steven.Pollock@colorado.edu

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