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The Impact and Promise of Teaching with Open-Source Computational Material Documents

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The Impact and Promise of Teaching with Open-Source Computational Material 

written by Wolfgang Christian

This presentation describes open source curricular material for students and teachers who have different skills and varying levels of preparation. Learning how to run the "software du jour" is not the objective of integrating computer-based material into the curriculum.  Learning computational thinking, how to use computation and computer-based visualization to communicate ideas, how to design and build models, and how to use ready-to-run to foster critical thinking is the objective.  Modeling is a research-proven pedagogy that predates computers. It attempts to enhance student achievement through the Modeling Cycle.  This approach was pioneered by Robert Karplus and the SCIS Project in the 1960s and 70s and later extended by the Modeling Instruction Program led by Jane Jackson and David Hestenes at Arizona State University.  This talk describes a no-cost open-source computational tools aligned with this Modeling Cycle pedagogy. Our tools, curricular material, and ready-to-run examples are available from the Open Source Physics Collection of the National Science Foundation funded AAPT-ComPADRE digital library.

Last Modified August 30, 2016

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