Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman Pioneers Use Of Technology In Teaching Undergraduates

Nobel laureate Carl Wieman, distinguished professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, says the use of an electronic feedback system and other innovations are improving learning in his undergraduate class of non-science majors.

Wieman said last spring's class on "The Physics of Everyday Life" was "spectacularly successful" and he looks forward to seeing how the same techniques will work in the fall semester's larger class. His current class has a capacity enrollment of 216 students and had a substantial list of students wanting to get in.

This academic year will be the fourth time he has taught the two-semester sequence. The class covers physics through the examination of familiar items such as light bulbs, clocks, radios, musical instruments, microwave ovens and nuclear weapons.

Each student in the class uses an infrared transmitter "clicker" -- similar to a TV remote control -- to send "votes" to a computer, where they are tabulated and displayed to the entire class on a projection screen.

Each clicker is registered to a student and has an individual signal that can be identified. The system allows for active participation by all students and provides immediate feedback to the instructor and the students about any confusion or misunderstandings in the material covered, he said.

Wieman is one of 22 CU-Boulder faculty members who are using the clickers in their classrooms this fall, up from seven a year ago, said Michael Dubson, a senior physics instructor and campus leader in the use of clickers. He estimates that 4,000 to 5,000 CU-Boulder students are currently using clickers, often in large freshman courses.

Assigning students to sit in permanent groups of three or four throughout the semester and then "vote" as a group on the predicted outcome of experiments has generated much more student discussion and involvement, Wieman said.

Besides the clickers the class incorporates other innovations, including extensive use of online interactive simulations and Web-based resources, essay homework questions requiring students to explain their reasoning and a computer-based homework system for rapid grading and feedback to students. The class also features numerous in-class experiments with data taken and displayed to the students in real time and collaborative problem-solving sessions where students work together to solve highly challenging homework problems that connect physics concepts to the world around them.

"We are trying to teach these students to think like scientists, and thinking is not a spectator sport," Wieman said. "So we use all these techniques to try to ensure that the students are spending all of their time in class engaged in thinking hard about physics ideas.

"For most of them having to think hard while in class, instead of just listening passively or mindlessly copying notes off the blackboard is a novel experience," he said. "We do see signs that it is paying off, though.

"At the end of the first week of class a student told me he had taken another course last year where the instructor just lectured the whole time, and he said he had learned more in the first week of our class than he did in that entire semester."

Indications of success include a much higher percentage of students coming to class who are both asking and responding to questions, he said. Test scores also prove students are learning more.

Wieman co-teaches with physics postdoctoral research associate Kathy Perkins and also uses three undergraduate learning "coaches" to help them teach the class.

"The learning coaches have been an invaluable addition to the course," Perkins said. "The coaches are there, both in lecture and during the 10-plus hours of problem-solving sessions, to get the students working together on the problems, and making sense of the concepts. When you see this type of activity, it's a clear sign of active learning."

The class also makes increasing use of computer simulations created through the Physics Education Technology Project, or PhET. Wieman launched the project a year ago with $250,000 of his Nobel Prize money in cooperation with the Kavli Institute of Oxnard, Calif., the National Science Foundation and CU-Boulder.

The project focuses on creating interactive "virtual" physics experiments by using Java simulations, a type of computer code that allows users to manipulate virtual objects on the computer screen.

"Simulations provide information in a way that no other method of presentation can do," Wieman said. "It has the potential to transform how people learn science."

The 2001 Nobel laureate has taught at CU-Boulder since 1984 and holds a Marsico Endowed Chair of Excellence. He also is a fellow of JILA, a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

More information on Wieman's "The Physics of Everyday Life" class can be found on the Web at http://www.Colorado.EDU/physics/phys1010. More information on PhET can be found at www.colorado.edu/physics/phet.

Editors: Reporters and photographers are welcome to attend Professor Wieman's class but need to call him in advance at (303) 492-6963. The class meets from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Duane Physics, room G1B20.