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A link to slides and a video of the presentation (Boston University Physics Department: 01/17/17)

 PHYSICS is the door into STEM education! www.GoMars.xyz/1717.html

The rest of the web-page presents my PPT presentation at NES-AAPT

“Physics Course to Every Student! Physics into Every School!”

in Oct. of 2016 (https://aapt-nes.org/)

Click on this link for the video:

https://youtu.be/oYM_ldpuOYM (or http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4ymbgk, if YouTube removed my video – not sure why, but sometimes it happens).

This link is on MOCC (a.k.a. on developing standards for measuring content knowledge in physics): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix5Mu3M3YFk

This link is on “Treat Education Like Space Exploration!”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AMcx5BLz14

1. Hello. I’m Dr. Valentin Voroshilov. Before moving to the topic of my presentation I would like to make a short announcement.

2. Many people outside of this room don’t know that nowadays physics methods of analyzing various phenomena have spread far beyond the world of physics.

3. First to mention, of course, is applications of computational physics to business. There are books, articles, conferences.

4. Many people majoring or minoring in physics have become successful businessmen.

5. And physics is changing many other human practices:

6. Biology, medicine, even sport.

7.  But the true importance of physics is not in the computational methods developed in it and ready to be deployed in other fields. The true importance of physics is in enhancing reasoning abilities of every single person taking physics course.

8. Physics is more powerful tool for advancing reasoning abilities than mathematics or computer coding!

9. Currently less than a half of high school students taking physics class.

10. This means that 60 % of high school graduates are not ready for the demands of the contemporary job market.

11. That is why I am asking today all members to join forces and to petition the governors to develop a plan with the goal of having all high school students taking physics course by the year of 2020.

12. There are so many people in this room who are much more experienced than I to draft such a petition. But I think every state should do it independently. Here in Connecticut you can tell your governor – “We have to have all our high school students taking physics, but if we want to be first in the nation, we got to do it fast, I heard guys in Massachusetts want to do it, too”. And in Massachusetts we would tell our governor – “We have to have all our high school students taking physics, but if we want to be first in the nation, we got to do it fast, I heard guys in Connecticut want to do it, too”.

13. Thank you for letting me to diverge from the main topic of my presentation.

14. Physics is a science. Teaching physics is not.

15. Every science is based on a solid foundation of the results of intensive data mining.

16. Educational data mining is a young field. It starts producing a large amount of data.

17. However, having a lot of data without being able to make a comparison is like using different currencies without establishing exchange rates.

18. Based on current data all we can conclude so far is that: if we take two large groups of similar students, and one group of students will have a more extensive or divers learning experience (for example, more contact hours, or more time spent on certain exercises, or training through more different exercises, etc.) students from that group, on average, will demonstrate better learning

outcomes than the students in a controlled group.

19. This conclusion becomes almost obvious if we employ the notion that a brain is basically a muscle, or a collection of muscles, the development of which strongly correlates with the variety and intensity of exercises it goes through.

20. In order to move beyond the obvious we need to adapt to teaching physics the same approach which had been adopted to doing physics. We need a standard which, like in physics, is an actual object, or a feature of an object, accompanied by a specific procedure which allows comparing similar features carried by other objects with the one of the standard (that is why “a standard” is also called “a prototype”, or “an etalon”).

21. I believe that, following physics, “a standard” for measuring learning outcomes must satisfy the following five conditions:

22. I believe that the time has come to create a coalition of individuals and institutions who would see as an achievable goal developing the universal standard for measuring learning outcomes in physics (for starters). So far I am the only member, but I welcome everyone!

23. The methodology or framework for the deployment of such a standard is following “a driving exam” approach: instead of using a verbal description of what students should know and be able to do (a.k.a. “educational standards”), making them to demonstrate what they should know and be able to do using a “standardized” collection of exercises and actions (a.k.a. “physics standards”).

24. This methodology is based on the four fundamental principles.

25.

and

26. The most important principle says

27. Using the fourth principle (and new terminology), we can classify all problems based on the structure of the internal connections between the quantities involved in constructing their solution.

28. For example, here are samples of problems which are congruent or similar to each other.

29. It is very important, that

30. For the three previous problems, the root problem sounds like the one at the bottom of the screen.

31. To help us to classify all root problems we can use the so-called MOCCs (a map of operationally connected categories: http://teachology.xyz/mocc.htm).

32. A complete set of root problems can be used to describe desired and different levels of learning outcomes of physics students.

33. The first step toward the association would be agreeing on the set of root problems (classifying them based on the difficulty).

34. Thank you.

NES-AAPT  PETITION  to  our  GOVERNOR

To the Governor of …

Many people don’t know that nowadays physics methods of analyzing various phenomena have spread far beyond the world of physics.

First to mention, of course, is applications of computational physics to business.

There are books, articles, you name it.

Many people majoring or minoring in physics have become successful businessmen.

But physics is changing many other human practices:

Biology, medicine, even sport.

But the true importance of physics is not in the computational methods developed in it and ready to be deployed in other fields. The true importance of physics is in enhancing/intensifying logical or reasoning abilities of every single person taking physics course.

Currently less than a half of high school students taking physics class.

This means that 60 % of high school graduates are not ready for the demands of the contemporary job market.

That is why we are asking today all members to join forces and to petition the governors to develop a plan with the goal of having all high school students taking physics course by the year of 2020.

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