In the 2022-23 academic year, we introduced low-stakes formative quizzes to the large lecture section of an introductory course.  At the beginning of the weekly lecture, students answer a couple of short questions based on the previous week’s material.  The quiz is then quickly discussed before proceeding with new topics and students are encouraged to use it as a learning experience.  They receive a modest amount of credit for making a reasonable attempt.  The presentation will focus on the implementation details, including how the format of the quiz was modified in the fall of 2024 to promote more metacognitive reflection by students.  We will also share results of efforts to assess the impact of this tool.

Transparent course structure is an intentionally inclusive design which provides students a complete view of course content, activities and assessments up front.  This explicit layout enables students more focused content interaction, leads to lower overall anxiety and provides for a broadened understanding of concept connection.   I will present an example of transparent course design as applied to the year-long Introductory Physics sequence for bio-adjacent majors at University of California Santa Cruz.  Within this fine-grained transparent design, between 120 and 140 module-specific learning outcomes are directly tied to components of the course such as reading, homework, slides, in-class activities, active learning sessions, laboratory experiments, quizzes and midterms. A summary of the key components of implementation, as well as observed qualitative outcomes will be provided. 

Student misconceptions in physics are numerous, robust, and challenging to overcome. To help students confront and conquer these, the new 16th edition of University Physics by Young and Freedman (Pearson, in press) includes a suite of 44 “Caution Cartoons” that we have created, each designed to address a particular misconception or conceptual stumbling block. (RAF is one of the original group that helped start the San Diego Comic-Con in the 1970s; JMRdeA is both a professional cartoonist and a physicist.) These “Caution Cartoons” use the same cast of characters as our “Physics Comics and Stories” comics (which we presented at the Summer 2023 and Winter 2024 meetings). We will detail the process of creating these cartoons, show several examples, and describe progress on new chapters of “Physics Comics and Stories.”

While dealing with uncertainty is an important skill, the method of significant figures (also known as significant digits) is a particularly poor way to do it. The method is inconsistent and often fails. There are approaches for dealing with and reporting uncertainty that are more correct and are easier for teachers and students.