I-Corps: Exploring Physics - the Curriculum App

University Of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia MO

Investigators

Abstract

The Exploring Physics Curriculum App provides a yearlong digital curriculum for conceptual physics that can be used as early as 9th grade. Thus the app provides ALL students access to a physics course, in contrast to the 39% of high school students who take physics at present. Additionally, many school districts are replacing textbooks with mobile devices for their students. Districts need a comprehensive, rigorous, interactive and engaging digital curriculum, beyond just digital versions of existing textbooks. The Exploring Physics Curriculum App addresses both these needs. Students learn physics using a discussion-based hands-on method, with embedded animations, simulations and media. The app also provides teachers extensive built-in resources to teach the course. This I-Corps team expects that the proposed comprehensive, interactive curriculum app will be a standout in the digital curriculum landscape. By exposing ALL students to physics, the foundation of STEM, this team addresses a national need as stated in the 2010 report to the President on K-12 education in STEM for America's future. The app will be available on iPad, Android and PC/Mac platforms. The paper-pencil version of the curriculum has been extensively tested during a previous Math-Science Partnership project funded by NSF (A TIME for Freshman Physics (NSF DUE 0928924, 2009-15). The curriculum is aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) both in disciplinary core ideas and scientific practices. An inquiry-and modeling-based curriculum was created during that project, and features of interest to students and teachers were tested (for example, specific labs, discussion points necessary for students to infer conceptual models of phenomena, level of algebraic and graphing complexity, reading levels, depth of knowledge spans, level of interactivity desired). In the app, labs are set up so that students are the designers of experiments that then lead them to producing conceptual or mathematical models of a concept. Thus, laws are not "given" to the student, but they "discover" them with guidance from the teacher and discussion among students. They then gain deeper knowledge about the concept from reading pages and practice application of the concept in practices that follow each lab.