Collaborative Research: Community Sourcing Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences

Swarthmore College, Swarthmore PA

Investigators

Abstract

The Introductory Physics for Life Science (IPLS) Portal will enhance the education of hundreds of thousands of life science students each year by providing engaging and effective IPLS instructional materials and helping IPLS instructors use these materials. This collaborative effort of the American Association of Physics Teachers and eight colleges and universities, including a community college and a Hispanic-serving institution, will create an open-source, peer-reviewed, and innovatively structured environment for IPLS content. Initially containing materials from multiple NSF-funded research and development projects, the Portal will become a development platform for IPLS curricula. The site will serve as both an archive and a dissemination tool, including a course-building interface for faculty. Instructors will be supported in creating innovative and individualized courses, mixing and matching from multiple sources tuned to their needs, offering a flexible and low-cost alternative to traditional textbooks. Many of the objectives and features of the project are innovative. Hence, the project also includes research components of four critical and interacting elements: IPLS content, IPLS pedagogy, the organizational structure of the site, including tagging and taxonomy of all elements for appropriate selection to meet the needs of individual users, and the user interface. Three overlapping research teams will carry out this work: the User-Centered Design team, the Instructional Content Design team, and the Community-Building and Professional-Development team. This project focuses on engaging and expanding three communities: (1) physics and biology education researchers, (2) IPLS contributors, and (3) IPLS adopters wanting to use and adapt existing IPLS materials. Merging and expanding the efforts of these communities will occur through a combination of workshops, online support communities, and research to advance the understanding of faculty professional development for IPLS education. The IPLS-Portal infrastructure, once developed, could be used to provide a community-sourcing environment for other STEM disciplines.