The Impact and Promise of Open-Source Computational Material for Physics Teaching

Abstract

A computer-based modeling approach to teaching must be flexible because students and teachers have different skills and varying levels of preparation. Running the “software du jour” is not the objective for integrating computational physics 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 models to foster critical thinking is the objective. A computational modeling approach to teaching is a research-proven pedagogy that predates computers. It attempts to enhance student achievement through the Modeling Cycle. The Modeling Cycle was pioneered by Robert Karplus and the SCIS Project in the 1960s and 1970s 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 approach aligned with a 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.