Physics Department Knocks Down Walls

At Ithaca College, students don't snooze through a stuffy lecture on magnetism, because they are engaged in doing physics instead of just listening to a professor talk. Faculty in the department of physics have committed themselves to a new technology-rich, active learning environment for all of their 100-level courses, which means no more lecture halls for introductory physics and physics general education courses.

During the summer of 2005, room 206 in the Center for Natural Sciences was transformed into a pilot study of Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP). This study allowed the physics department to test new methods for applicability to large classes, experiential learning, and group learning at the introductory level of study. In the fall of 2006, a larger, new SCALE-UP facility will be inaugurated, called the performance-based physics laboratory. This room, created by knocking down walls between existing rooms, will have 11 round tables and seat 9 students per table, allowing for a total of 99 students per course. SCALE-UP uses a studio-workshop format, replacing the traditional lecture/laboratory/recitation format with integrated sessions of four to six hours of activity-based instruction per week. Classes are often held in two-hour blocks. Students work in groups of three, with three groups per table, and they have ready access to data collection equipment around the perimeter of the room. Faculty and advanced undergraduate teaching assistants can easily circulate in the room to assist the individual groups of students. The studio-style setup permits the use of more faculty resources currently invested in laboratory sections to create a more effective model of co-teaching combined lecture and laboratory.

The advantages of such classrooms are numerous. Because all the aspects of the course are taught in the same room with the same students and instructors, activities and materials build sequentially—an improvement over the more traditional format of lecture, laboratory, and recitation as separate sections in various settings. Research indicates that these methods improve student comprehension and learning. Students build learning communities in the classroom. As the physics department adds the popular astronomy courses to its cadre of performance-based physics offerings, it will be able to more successfully educate students in science and scientific methods.