About the PICUP Collection
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| Overview | Review Process | Review Criteria | Authoring Guidelines | Authoring Instructions |
Collection Overview
The PICUP Collection is an online publication of computational educational materials that are appropriate for undergraduate physics courses. We encourage faculty who have found ways to enhance physics education through the use of computation to submit their computational activities/assignments, and supporting materials, for publication in the PICUP Collection.
The PICUP Collection of computational educational materials consists of three different categories:
Standard Exercise Sets
Standard Exercise Sets are peer reviewed. There is a uniform format for Exercise Sets, and several required components must be completed before submission for publication in the PICUP Collection. The format for Exercise Sets was developed to ensure that the materials in the PICUP Collection are easily adaptable to prospective users’ pedagogical preferences. Reviews are collected and used to provide positive feedback to authors for the purpose of producing high quality educational materials that will be useful to the larger community. There is no prescribed length or number of exercises for Exercise Sets contributions. For instance, the exercises and supporting materials could span the spectrum from a single end-of-chapter-like problem, to multiple exercises with multiple parts that might require the effort of a semester-long project. The computational activities in Standard Exercise Sets should be programming language agnostic; that is, the exercises, and their solutions, should be such that they can be implemented in any programming language or computing environment.
Specialized Exercise Sets
Specialized Exercise Sets are peer reviewed and contain all the components that are required for Standard Exercise Sets, but make use of the functionality found only in a particular programming language or computational environment.
Variations
Standard and Specialized Exercise Sets can also be submitted as a Variation of an existing Exercise Set. If you see an Exercise Set that you’re interested in, but have developed a significantly different approach, or propose different computational activities from what appears in the PICUP collection, you’re encouraged to submit your version as a Variation.
Faculty Commons
The Faculty Commons was created to provide faculty with a quick and easy way to share developed materials or ideas for materials related to computational education in STEM courses. There is no required structure for Faculty Commons submissions. Materials submitted to the Faculty Commons are not peer reviewed; however, before publication a PICUP editor will inspect all submitted materials to ensure that the content is appropriate for the PICUP website.
