Since Fall 2019, our team has been in the process of reforming our introductory physics courses using the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach. This, alongside the pandemic which required all courses to be held entirely online for one year, has required us to revise our curricular materials multiple times over the past several years. In this talk we will share some of the strategies we have learned both for developing materials which encourage students to actively participate in their own learning and for creating materials which can be used authentically by any member of the teaching team.

The well documented deficit of physics graduates pursuing education as a career has led to a significant number of high school teachers with little to no background in the discipline, which can result in reduced impact in the classroom. The Mitchell Institute Physics Enhancement Program (MIPEP) was founded in 2012 to address such problems through targeting out-of-field high school physics teachers. MIPEP participants work with Texas A&M University faculty and two master teachers over a two week period, focusing on both subject comprehension and pedagogy for implementation. Here we examine the impact of the virtual version of MIPEP on the 2021 cohort. Participant pre- and post-program knowledge and confidence were measured using an assessment compiled of questions from mechanics, electricity and magnetism, optics, and modern physics. Analysis of our data will be shown, which may encourage other institutions to create similar programs.

Since Fall 2019 we have been reforming both our algebra and calculus-based introductory physics courses with the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach. As expected, each academic year, students are initially resistant to the approach. In this talk we will discuss specifics of the resistance to ISLE expressed by students in our calculus based introductory physics course and the quantitative effects of "pep talks" and institutional change sessions. We will also explore possible improvements to our implementation of the ISLE approach to mitigate resistance particularly from students who have already encountered non-ISLE physics.

Universities use instructors with varying levels of physics expertise for undergraduate physics instruction, including faculty members, graduate teaching assistants, and undergraduate learning assistants. This study examines the effects of instructor type on students’ ratings of explanation quality. We collected written explanations to common introductory physics questions from highly recommended instructors of each type. Students enrolled in an introductory physics course made pairwise comparisons of the written explanations until a rank order could be generated for each student participant. We determined if instructor type could determine placement in a student’s rank order using ordinal regression. Using a relative placement algorithm, we extracted a general rank order for the explanations that reflects consensus opinion on the relative quality of the explanations. We present the results as a commentary on the relative effectiveness of different instructor types on providing explanations that students perceive as good explanations.

In Fall 2019 we reformed all of our introductory physics courses with the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach. In this approach, students build physics knowledge by doing science. We used ISLE-based materials to write a curriculum and have made structural changes to support it. The curriculum is taught by a team of 10 instructors (full time faculty, part time lecturers, and graduate TAs) with the help of 10 undergraduate Learning Assistants (LAs). All instructors and LAs attend a pre-semester workshop and weekly prep meetings. Three years into our reform, the curriculum and instructional team has become the “new normal.” 450 students enroll in our courses each semester. The big goal driving our reform is to teach students to think like scientists. We present data showing success and areas of improvement.

Since Fall 2021, we have been teaching one introductory physics section at Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) using the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach. This section has served as a pilot for a broader change to incorporate the ISLE approach to all lecture and lab sections for the introductory physics course. In this talk we compare the approach that students take to solving physics problems from sections which are taught traditionally to the one taught using the ISLE approach and how his has motivated changes to be made in the way that students are exposed to physics.