Volume IV: What works, what matters, what lasts

Workshop Physics

21st Century Pedagogies

Workshop Physics is a calculus-based introductory physics course designed to completely replace traditional lectures and weekly laboratory sessions. In a typical Workshop Physics course, students use equipment and computer tools for data acquisition, visualization, analysis, and mathematical modeling. Workshop Physics is one component of the Activity Based Physics Suite.

Leaders:

  • Priscilla W. Laws
    Professor of Physics & Astronomy Emerita
    Dickinson College

  • Nancy Baxter Hastings
    Professor of Mathematics & Computer Science
    Dickinson College

Essays, Stories & Reports:

Resources from other sources:

  • Workshop Physics Home
    "The Workshop Physics project at Dickinson College represents an attempt to redesign the teaching methods in introductory physics courses to take advantage of recent findings in physics education research and introduce students to the use of modern computer tools."

  • The Activity Based Physics Suite
    "Activity-Based Physics is a multi-institutional project to sustain and enhance current efforts to render introductory physics courses more effective and exciting at both the secondary and college level. This program represents a collaborative effort by an informally constituted team of educational reformers to use the outcomes of physics education research along with flexible computer tools to develop activity-based models of physics instruction."