An online physics degree for science teachers

There is a shortage of physics trained high school teachers in Australia, like in many countries. The fraction of high school students choosing to study physics in their final years of schooling has been dropping. In 2021, only 12.8% of final year students chose to study physics in New South Wales (NSW). The proportion of students choosing to study physics is even worse for female students, with only 17.9% of the students studying physics identifying as female, the average over the past five years has been 22.3% (Board of Studies NSW, 2022). The gender ratios among teachers closely matches the gender ratios of students, while over 55% of secondary teachers are female, in physics, under 30% of teachers are female (Weldon, 2015). The fraction of students choosing physics in rural high schools is even lower, and the shortage of physics teachers even more dire. In Australia, we also have a problem with teacher attrition, with many sources reporting that around 30% of teachers are leaving the profession in the first five years (Weldon, 2018). To increase the number of students choosing to study physics and improve diversity among this cohort, we need well trained physics teachers who can enthuse students in junior high school. To address these problems, in 2018, I introduced an online Graduate Certificate in Physics for Science Teachers. Since its introduction, 33 students have completed the degree, 26 women and 7 men, with numbers trending upwards (there was a dip in 2021 because of COVID workloads on school teachers). Around half the teachers enrolled in the degree work in rural schools. By training established teachers in physics, rather than training physicists how to teach, there is a lower attrition rate among the Graduate Certificate graduates than among graduates from teaching programs. Feedback from the Graduate Certificate graduates has been very positive: many have commented that it has improved their teaching of junior science. Inspiring students in junior high school, before they make their decision about what to study for their final two years, is key to shifting the fraction of students choosing physics related careers. An online degree aimed at established teachers that covers both physics content and pedagogy is a useful tool to address the shortage of physics trained teachers and influence the teaching of physics in junior high school. Teachers who are confident in physics can link related concepts, helping students with their conceptual understanding, and contextualise what they are teaching to make it relevant to the students in their class. This has been shown to improve one’s “Physics Identity”, which in turn is linked to students persisting in physics (Hazari et al., 2010). A degree such as this one has the potential to address similar problems in other countries. REFERENCES Board of Studies NSW (2022). Complete Board of Studies NSW statistics archives. Retrieved 21 July from https://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/ebos/static/ebos_stats.html Hazari, Z., Sonnert, G., Sadler, P., & Shanahan, M.C. (2010). Connecting High School Physics Experiences, Outcome Expectations, Physics Identity, and Physics Career Choice: A Gender Study. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47(8), 978-1003. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.20363 Weldon, P. R. (2015). The teacher workforce in Australia: Supply, demand and data issues. Policy Insights, Issue 2 Melbourne: ACER. Weldon, P. (2018). Early career teacher attrition in Australia: Evidence, definition, classification and measurement. Australian Journal of Education, 62(1), 61-78

TACKLING THE SHORTAGE OF PHYSICS TEACHERS

Young professionals with STEM skills are in high and increasing demand. Unfortunately, there is a prevalent gender disparity among graduates in engineering and physics. Girls are opting out of studying physics before the end of year 10: less than one quarter of the year 11 and 12 physics cohort in NSW is female. Physics trained high school teachers are needed to engage students in junior secondary science. However, there is currently a state, national and global shortage of such teachers, which is particularly acute in regional schools. Having a conceptual focus and contextualising material has been shown to have a positive impact on students’ “physics identity” and consequently their interest in a STEM career. Teachers need a good understanding of physics themselves in order to design engaging classes for students. To address this shortage, UNSW has introduced an online Graduate Certificate in Physics for Science Teachers, which is now in its third year. Feedback from graduandates has been very positive: some have secured jobs in regional schools, many have commented on the impact it has had on their teaching of junior science, and some have shared resources they developed with colleagues

My experience with “ungrading” a large first-year physics course

The COVID-19 pandemic gave us an opportunity to rethink assessment. At the University of New South Wales (UNSW) pass/fail grading, which was retired in the 1970s, was brought back as an option for courses. In this grading scheme students do not get a mark, they get SY if they are successful or FL if they do not meet the requirements. Another change that occurred in the wake of the pandemic were that large courses (over 400) were no longer allowed end of term invigilated exams. The pandemic occurred the year after UNSW had moved to a three-term calendar, significantly reducing time between terms, hence making marking exams and running supplementary exams a challenge. In response to these factors, I have changed the way we assess students in Physics 1A. Physics 1A is a large, 1700 students per year, introductory physics course that caters predominantly for engineering and science students. In 2020, the course adopted pass/fail grading with no other changes, apart from no invigilation, to the assessment structure: tests, labs and a final exam. In 2023, when we could expect students to be on campus, the assessment structure was changed to comprise of three hurdle tasks: two invigilated tests, and lab, with pass/fail grading remaining in place. The students could attempt the tests up to three times as they gained understanding. The students sit the tests online in the first-year physics laboratory, the automatic marking of the tests means that this new model does not have an adverse impact on staff workloads. My pedagogical reasoning behind these changes to assessment is that students have been trained through high school to measure their academic success through the grades that they receive. There is increasing evidence that a fixed mindset, where students believe that grades measure how smart they are, gets in the way of learning and growth (Fernandez, 2021). There is also evidence that grades in first-year physics are predominantly a measure of privilege (Salehi et. al., 2019). Students who enter university well prepared by good high school teachers, and who consequently scored well in Higher School Certificate physics and mathematics, obtain higher grades in our courses and at similar courses in other institutes. Good assessment should give students a chance to learn from their mistakes. In this model students can practice the questions in advance, they are pulled from a large bank of over 200 three-part questions for the course, receiving constructive feedback on their attempts. If they do not pass the test the first or second time, they have at least one week to study before re-attempting it. The invigilation discourages students from applying academically dishonest assessment practices and teaches them good study habits in their first year. My experience introducing this change has been over-whelming positive: positive feedback from students in end of term surveys and during term from course representatives; a high level of student engagement with the formative tasks and forums; students are still achieving high scores on the summative tests (even though only a pass is required); no cases referred to the misconduct unit; and a lower workload for staff. I plan to roll out this same model to other first-year courses. REFERENCES Fernandez, O. E. (2021). Second chance grading: An equitable, meaningful, and easy-to-implement grading system that synergizes the research on testing for learning, mastery grading, and growth mindsets. Primus, 31(8), 855-868. Salehi, S., Burkholder, E., Lepage, G. P., Pollock, S., & Wieman, C. (2019). Demographic gaps or preparation gaps?: The large impact of incoming preparation on performance of students in introductory physics. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 15(2), 020114

Novel ways to utilise quiz tools

All learning management systems have a quiz tool. We know that when students are actively engaged with learning activities, their learning gains improve. In this workshop, we will look at how the quiz tool can be utilised to increase the cognitive engagement of students in different components of online courses: lectures, labs and tutorials, and assessment. Lectures can be set up with short videos interspersed with questions in which students practice solving problems related to the theory presented in these videos. Students can then receive targeted feedback and solutions to scaffold them through this learning. Online labs can make use of simulations embedded in a quiz or present data (which can be randomised) for students to analyse. Tutorials can encourage students to try a question before presenting the answer. Other advantages of the quiz tool include the ease with which participation can be tracked; automatic marking, which can reduce marking loads while giving effective feedback; and randomising variables for students, which make it easier to track cases of academic misconduct. In this workshop, the examples given will use the STACK question type in Moodle. This question type allows for multi-part questions with randomised variables, carry-on marking, and algebraic answers. On other learning management systems, other question types can be utilised in a similar way, such as Mobius and Numbas. Participants will be encouraged to share how they have used the quiz tool or seen it used. Intended Audience: University Educator

Editorial

Welcome to the International Conference on Physics Education for 2022. With the increased rate of change to how education is delivered, due to sudden shifts to a heavy reliance on online teaching, we decided to make the theme of this conference “Preparing for the Future”. We hope that over the week you have a chance to be inspired by the practice of others, reflect on what works (and does not work) in physics teaching, and have meaningful discussions with colleagues from around the world. The International Conference on Physics Education is the flagship conference of IUPAP commission 14, Physics Education. As such it is governed by IUPAP’s conference policies which you can find here: https://iupap.org/conferences/conference-policies/. This year the conference is being hosted from Australia with satellite hosts in Thailand and Indonesia. A big thankyou to IUPAP for providing funding for this conference. I encourage you to actively participate in this conference. We have designed it to be as inclusive as possible. We chose an online conference as it allowed us to keep fees very low and offer scholarships to encourage participation from delegates all around the world. We also knew that Australia would be a long way for many of you to travel, and thought that the travel expenses would be prohibitive. We have designed the conference to cater to university level physics educators, high school physics teachers and people teaching high school teachers. The interactive workshops will be a highlight of the conference, along with exciting plenary and keynote talks, panels and contributed talks and posters. The talks and panels will all be recorded and available for watching asynchronously during the conference as we know the time differences can be hard to manage in some locations. I am very grateful to the committee members, many of whom have gone above and beyond to bring this conference together. Thanks to the members of all the committees: Organising committee, Program committee, technical committee and the International committee. A special thankyou to Manju Sharma, Jacinta den Besten, Thomas Dixon, Ana Lopes, Pornrat Wattanakasiwich, Angela Fösel for all their hard work and to my co-chairs Jiradawan Huntula and Aris Doyan. I hope that you find this conference interesting and enjoyable and that you get at least a few good ideas that you can implement in your own teaching or research practice.   Professor Elizabeth Angstmann Conference Chair The IUPAP International Conference on Physics Educatio

OUR APPROCH TO ONLINE, ASYNCHRONOUS LECTURES

In this presentation, we will outline our approach to the development of online lectures for introductory first year physics courses. We chose to deliver lectures asynchronously with synchronous support for the increased flexibility this offers students. Our lectures are set up as quizzes that include short videos to introduce new material followed by questions for students to put into practice the learned material. This lecture structure is the basis of constructive alignment; the connections between lectures and assessment are explicit for students as they practice solving similar problems in both. Within each lecture, we actively engage students using strategies such as predict-observe-explain activities, real life examples, and historic interludes. Further, the videos were developed whilst keeping in mind the principles of cognitive load theory and Universal Design for Learning. During this presentation, we will also detail how students interacted with the material and the feedback students have given. We note that while we do not think that online lectures should replace face-to-face lectures for all students, online lectures can be a useful resource for students who are unable to attend live lectures; as a revision tool; or to free up time in the lecture for active learning

Benefits of year long placements of high school teachers at universities

In 2017, a Visiting Teaching Fellow Program was introduced in the School of Physics, University of New South Wales (UNSW). As part of this program, each year, a high school teacher is seconded to the university to teach first year classes and develop outreach materials and programs. This has led to a very rewarding and productive partnership between teachers and academics. The teaching fellows have worked on numerous projects, including the introduction of online depth study resources to support the introduction of new Higher School Certificate (HSC, final two years of high school) syllabi; the opening of the first-year physics laboratory outside UNSW teaching periods for school excursions; and the introduction of a summer school program, SciX, to support the extension science syllabus. Many of these projects expanded from physics to encompass the entire Science Faculty. The teachers have found the experience rewarding and refreshing, while academics have benefitted from having a high school teacher’s insight into the background of our incoming students. These partnerships have continued once the teachers return to their schools. Past teaching fellows often deliver the bridging course and utilise their knowledge of what students have learnt in high school; serve on the School Advisory Board and inform us about what is important for school students; and help with making outreach events at conferences relevant to high school students. The links forged between the school systems and the former teaching fellows also allow knowledge of opportunities for their current students on return to their respective schools. This program was briefly suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns but is returning in 2023

LEARNING FROM THE PANDEMIC: APPROVALS AND PROTOCOLS FOR RESEARCH OUTPUT

The current crisis offers a unique opportunity to look at the effects of changes to physics teaching and the physics student experience with the sudden move to online teaching. In this workshop, we will cover tips on getting ethics approval to conduct education experiments and gather data in courses, suitable tools to measure physics student engagement and outcomes, and how to ensure your data collection and analysis are valid (e.g., sample sizes). This will be followed by discussion about what data people are, or plan on, collecting and how to best utilise this going forwards. The Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) Physics Education Group (PEG) meeting will follow this, including the election of a new executive team

Development of a choose-your-own adventure physics course

Everyday Physics is an online, algebra-based, contextualised introductory physics course that has been running since 2013 with increasing student enrolments. In 2018, over 1,000 students took this course as an elective (not core to any program). The course is designed such that students explore the physics underlying common phenomena such as hot air balloon flight and flowing rivers. The course was designed with twelve topics, one for each week of a twelve-week semester. In 2019, with the University of New South Wales’ shift from semesters to nine-week terms, students could not complete all twelve topics in the compressed format. To address this, we redesigned the course, allowing students to pick eight of the twelve available topics. We expected this change to be popular with students, because giving students choice allows them to be in control of their learning, as per self-determination theory (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009). To make this work practically, the twelve topics were divided into three streams and assigned a level. Comprehension of higher-level topics is dependent on a sufficient understanding of lower-level topics; students had to complete the lower-level topics to “unlock” the higher ones. For example, a level 1 topic is, “How does a street light work?”, which covers basic circuit theory. The level 2 topic that follows on from this is, “Why does your kettle boil?”, which covers electrical power and some thermal physics. In the final exam, students are given twelve questions, one from each topic, and their eight highest marks count. This motivates many students to complete more than the required eight topics. Students complete three experiments at home throughout the course, which are due at fixed points during the term. The experiments, of which there are six in total, are designed to be completed with common household equipment and are associated with certain topics. We made sure that these were distributed in such a way that no matter what path the students chose through their learning (i.e., what topics they decided to complete), they would have completed the right number of topics with experiments at the required times. A major assessment in the course is a report where students design their own experiment to explore a concept of interest to them. This assessment includes a peer-review exercise to ensure students feel supported and allow them to learn from each other. These assessments are available from the ACDS resource repository (Angstmann et al., 2021). These changes have improved the course, and students are responding positively to the increase in autonomy that it allows. REFERENCES Angstmann, E., Jackson, J., Dixon, T. & de la Pena, M. (2021). At-Home Labs for First Year Physics. ACDS Resource repository: https://www.acds.edu.au/resource/at-home-labs-for-first-year-physics/ Niemiec, C. P., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the classroom: Applying self-determination theory to educational practice. Theory and Research in Education, 7(2), 133–144. https://doi.org/10.1177/147787850910431