The PER User's Guide is becoming part of PhysPort. The beta version of PhysPort has new assessment resources available now and many new features coming soon.
Peer Instruction:
Small group discussion of conceptual questions interspersed with lectures, increasing engagement and providing formative feedback on student thinking.
PhET Interactive Simulations:
Open-ended game-like simulations that include expert visual models, enabling scientist-like exploration and real-world connections.
Teaching with Clickers:
Students use electronic devices to answer questions and instructors collect and display responses, facilitating student engagement and collaboration.
Ranking Task Exercises in Physics:
Exercises in which students rank variations of a physical situation on the basis of a specified physical quantity and explain their reasoning.
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations:
Worksheets for use in lecture. Students predict results of demos, discuss in small groups, observe results, compare with predictions and explain.
Cooperative Group Problem-solving:
Students work in groups using structured problem-solving strategy to solve complex, context-rich problems too difficult to solve individually.
Physlets:
Small, flexible, educational physics applets that use simple graphics to convey only salient features of physical phenomena; modifiable and adaptable.
Just-in-Time Teaching:
Students answer questions online before class, promoting preparation for class and encouraging them to come to class with a "need to know."
Context-Rich Problems:
Students work in small groups on short, realistic scenarios, giving them a plausible motivation to solve problems.
Open Source Physics Collection:
Open source code libraries, tools, and compiled simulations. Collection includes curriculum resources for physics, computation, and computer modeling.
Tutorials:
Guided-inquiry worksheets for use in small groups, typically in a recitation section. Instructors engage students in Socratic dialogue.
Tutorials in Introductory Physics:
Guided-inquiry worksheets for small groups in recitation section of intro calculus-based physics. Instructors engage groups in Socratic dialogue.
RealTime Physics:
A series of introductory laboratory modules that use computer data acquisition tools to help students develop physics concepts and acquire lab skills.
Microcomputer-based Laboratories:
Lab activities to collect and present data graphically in real time, giving an intuitive sense of physics concepts that can't be observed directly.
Workshop Physics:
A calculus-based introductory physics curriculum designed to completely replace traditional lectures and laboratories with sequenced activities.
Tasks Inspired by Physics Education Research:
Short activities that help students apply concepts and address known difficulties; designed so that they cannot be solved using plug and chug.
Diagnoser Tools:
Tools to elicit students' initial ideas, lessons to engage those ideas, assessment items, and reporting structures for students and teachers.
Tools for Scientific Thinking:
Laboratory activities that use microcomputer-based laboratory tools to develop both conceptual understanding and quantitative laboratory skills.
SCALE-UP:
An integrated learning environment where the space is designed to facilitate interactions between small groups working on short, interesting tasks.
Modeling Instruction:
Instruction organized around active student construction of conceptual and mathematical models in an interactive learning community.
Open Source Tutorials:
Guided-inquiry worksheets for small groups in recitation section of intro algebra-based physics. Instructors engage groups in Socratic dialogue.
Physics by Inquiry:
Lab-based guided-inquiry curriculum for future and current teachers to develop deep understanding of physics content and scientific reasoning skills.
Physics and Everyday Thinking:
A guided-inquiry conceptual physics course designed to help students develop a deep conceptual understanding of big ideas in physics.
Physical Science and Everyday Thinking:
A guided-inquiry conceptual physical science course designed to help students develop a deep conceptual understanding of big ideas.
Learning Physical Science:
A guided-inquiry, conceptual physical science course intended for teaching in a lecture-style environment, e.g. classes with large enrollment.
CAE Think/Pair/Share:
Engage students in lecture classes by asking cognitively engaging multiple-choice questions to challenge their thinking and foster deep discussion.
Ranking Tasks for Introductory Astronomy:
Conceptual exercises in which students make comparative judgments to identify the order of various situations based on a physical outcome or result.
Investigative Science Learning Environment:
Comprehensive learning system for introductory physics that engages students in experiences that mirror experiences of practicing scientists.
CU Learning Assistant Program:
A program to recruit science majors to become K-12 teachers and to improve undergraduate education by implementing large-scale teaching reform.
Thinking Problems:
Questions for homework, clickers, and exams that help students connect mathematical and conceptual reasoning and relate physics to the real world.
Workbook for Introductory Physics:
Sequences of multiple-choice questions that emphasize qualitative reasoning and multiple representations. For interactive discussion in lecture.
Minds-On Physics:
Activity-based curriculum for high school physics. Helps students to explore, hone, and link concepts, and to develop analysis and reasoning skills.
Physics Union Mathematics:
A physics/physical science curriculum that builds on intrinsic mathematical reasoning to develop and strengthen mathematics and physics concepts.
Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment:
A pedagogy using clickers for interactive, student-centered science instruction that engages students in extended whole-class discussion.
CU Modern Physics Curriculum:
Curriculum for large-lecture modern physics class for engineering majors. Focus on reasoning development, model building, and real-world applications.
Matter and Interactions:
A modern calculus-based introductory curriculum with an emphasis on the application of fundamental principles and on the atomic nature of matter.
Paradigms in Physics:
Activities for upper-level physics that can be incorporated into a standard course or used as part of a restructuring of the undergraduate curriculum.
Peer Instruction for Quantum Mechanics:
A collection of multiple-choice and short answer questions for discussion and reflection in an upper-level undergraduate quantum mechanics course.
CPU Computer Simulators:
A suite of computer simulations for teaching physics and physical science through exploring phenomena and conducting simulated experiments.
Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorials (QuILTs):
Guided-inquiry worksheets for upper-level quantum mechanics. Connect quantitative formalism to qualitative understanding and build physical intuition.
Explorations in Physics:
A sequence of introductory, activity-based, laboratory courses that integrate the use of guided-inquiry techniques with self-directed projects.
Responsive Teaching in Science:
A practice of attending and responding to the substance of students' thinking. The instructor's next moves are based on students' emerging ideas.
PRISMS PLUS:
A high school physics curriculum and professional development program that uses a learning cycle pedagogy, inexpensive materials, and technology.
Intuitive Quantum Physics (IQP):
Tutorials for a course introducing non-science majors to basic ideas of quantum mechanics, including spectroscopy, simple molecules, and tunneling.
Tutorials in Thermal & Statistical Physics:
Guided-inquiry worksheet activities to help students develop a better understanding of upper-division thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.
Intermediate Mechanics Tutorials:
Small-group learning materials for teaching intermediate mechanics. A mix of conceptual, mathematical, and problem-solving activities.
CU upper-division E&M curriculum:
Supplementary activities for upper-level E&M. All materials are modular and can be mixed and matched with any other teaching strategy or materials.
CU upper-division QM curriculum:
Supplementary activities for upper-level QM I. All materials are modular and can be mixed and matched with any other teaching strategy or materials.
Scientific Community Laboratories:
Design labs in which students work in groups to design an experiment, carry it out, analyze it, and present their results to other groups.
Energy Project:
A professional development program for K-12 teachers on the learning of energy. Teachers construct an understanding about energy and about learning.
Student-Generated Scientific Inquiry:
A curriculum for pre-service teachers. Students craft and investigate their own scientific questions about a range of scientific topics.
