Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an evidence-based framework for teaching that aims to improve learning for all people. The three pillars of UDL are providing options for engagement, representation, and action & expression. By providing options for students to meet course expectations, educators can meet the needs and preferences of a diverse student population. In this presentation, I will briefly introduce and motivate the UDL guidelines before demonstrating the practical application of a guideline in physics and astronomy education. This talk will focus on the application of Guideline 2: Providing Options for Language & Symbols.

Language and symbolism are fundamental in communicating and understanding physics, but lack of direct instruction and inconsistencies in their use lead to student confusion. In this talk, I will demonstrate how physics educators can introduce and reinforce language and symbols with several alternative representations to improve accessibility, clarity, and comprehension for all students.

As part of a larger curriculum change for an introductory physics with calculus sequence, the teaching team began holding their office hours in a centralized public location in fall 2022. This appeared to enhance attendance and engagement, motivating the formalization of the Physics Help Room as a model for introductory physics support across the department. During the summer of 2023, the Help Room was renovated to improve comfort and accessibility, including augmenting lecture professor hours with peer tutors. To assess the impact of the the Help Room, we use a voluntary QR-code based sign-in system, with environmental “nudges” used to encourage sign-in. This data gathering allows us to articulate trends in student behavior and performance. Quantitative benefits of the help room include improved exam grades and office hour attendance rates. Qualitative benefits include improved student attitudes, engagement in social learning, and opportunities for impromptu personal and academic advising.  

Disadvantaged groups, spanning various categories like field-specific minorities, gender, socio-economic status, and First Generation College Students (FGCS), face diverse challenges, requiring a nuanced understanding of their unique barriers. Research indicates common struggles in self-efficacy and self-regulation within these groups. While reflective practices, such as exam wrappers, show promise in enhancing academic performance, their effectiveness in Physics and Engineering Courses varies. With minority and FGCS students though the self-efficacy can help drive, or sabotage, their struggling self-regulatory abilities. Therefore, this study details a self-efficacy/self-regulatory intervention in a University Physics Course at a high FGCS liberal arts school. We categorize and analyze the student responses in addition to academic scores, and analysis reveals initial academic improvement for many, but sustained progress necessitates not just to ‘study more’, but a student-proposed and individualized plan for changing study habits.

Many high school students begin a Physics class lacking the linguistic, mathematical, and critical thinking skills to succeed.  This lack of preparation causes stress for the student and can be detrimental to learning. This talk will consider early strategies and interventions to mitigate deficiencies in these areas so that the student will be able to handle later topics successfully and with negligible stress.

Inspired by the hands-on teaching of the late Harold "Doc" Edgerton, the father of high-speed photography, the MIT Edgerton Center facilitates a number of hands-on "hackathon" events globally. A hackathon is a space where students' ideas rule the realm. No idea is too crazy—we have students select a project that they are interested in building; we've had things from drones to musical instruments, from underwater robots to furniture to arcade machines. Students form teams around similar interests and groups ultimately come out with a finished product—even if it's not the one they had planned. The power of students' intrinsic motivation, that is, something that they care about, ultimately charges them through, enthusiastically, the building of things they had never dreamed of—except that they did! Having their teachers around to witness these hackathons creates a powerful, precedent-setting example—eye-opening as they discover that they can learn from their students. These small-scale revolutions are helping to encourage grand-scale futures of project-based active learning with teamwork, soul, and fulfillment. "Mind, hand, and heart" is a concept we’re accustomed to at MIT, but elsewhere it can represent a total paradigm shift which empowers students to have a say in how they learn and actually have fun while doing it.