PICUP Fall 2024 Webinar Series: Teaching Physics Creatively using Computational Essays
Presenter:
Tor Ole Odden
Description:
Tor Ole B. Odden, University of Oslo, Norway t.o.b.odden@fys.uio.no
Tuesday December 3 at 2 pm ET, 1 pm CT, 12 pm MT, 11 am PT --> Note the early time in the day for US based attendees, corresponding to 8 pm local time for the speaker.
Physics is a creative discipline, but the ways we teach physics often don't reflect this creativity. At the Center for Computing in Science Education at the University of Oslo, Norway, we have spent the last 6 years exploring how computation can help students to engage in creative research-like activities early in their physics careers. Using a teaching tool known as a computational essay, we have supported students in conducting and presenting independent computational research projects and studied the effects of these experiences on their views of physics and development of computational literacy. In this talk, I will describe what computational essays are, how we have used them in our teaching, and what we have learned about the importance of creative and agentic work in becoming a physicist.
