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2007

Confessions of a converted lecturer, at Education Lecture, University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), Wednesday, October 24, 2007:
talk_1352.pdf
I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students' performance significantly
Workshop on Peer Instruction, at Education Workshop, University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), Wednesday, October 24, 2007:
talk_1353.pdf
The basic goals of Peer Instruction are to encourage and make use of student interaction during lectures, while focusing students' attention on underlying concepts and techniques. The method has been assessed in many studies using standardized, diagnostic tests and shown to be considerably more effective than the conventional lecture approach to teaching. Peer Instruction is now used in a wide range of science and math courses at the college and secondary level. In this workshop, participants will learn about Peer Instruction, serve as the “class” in which Peer Instruction is demonstrated,... Read more about Workshop on Peer Instruction
Stopping time, at Phi Beta Kappa Public Lecture, University of Kentucky (Lexington, KY), Wednesday, October 24, 2007:
talk_1354.pdf
Time is of philosophical interest as well as the subject of mathematical and scientific research. Even though it is a concept familiar to most, the passage of time remains one of the greatest enigmas of the universe. The philosopher Augustine once said: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know." The concept time indeed cannot be explained in simple terms. Emotions, life, and death - all are related to our interpretation of the irreversible flow of time. After a discussion of the concept of time, we will review... Read more about Stopping time
Subcellular surgery and nanosurgery, at Physics Colloquium, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC, Canada), Friday, October 19, 2007:
talk_1322.pdf
We use femtosecond laser pulses to manipulate sub-cellular structures inside live and fixed cells. Using only a few nanojoules of laser pulse energy, we are able to selectively disrupt individual mitochondria in live bovine capillary epithelial cells, and cleave single actin fibers in the cell cytoskeleton network of fixed human fibro-blast cells. We have also used the technique to micromanipulate the neural network of C. Elegans, a small nematode. Our laser scalpel can snip individual axons without causing any damage to surrounding tissue, allowing us to study the function of individual... Read more about Subcellular surgery and nanosurgery
Confessions of a converted lecturer, at Physics Colloquium, University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC, Canada), Thursday, October 18, 2007:
talk_1338.pdf
I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students' performance significantly
Confessions of a converted lecturer, at Physics Colloquium, Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, BC, Candada), Wednesday, October 17, 2007:
talk_1351.pdf
I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students' performance significantly
Peer Instruction: 'brains-on' demo and discussion, at Special Seminar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA), Tuesday, October 9, 2007:
talk_1350.pdf
The basic goals of Peer Instruction are to encourage and make use of student interaction during lectures, while focusing students' attention on underlying concepts and techniques. The method has been assessed in many studies using standardized, diagnostic tests and shown to be considerably more effective than the conventional lecture approach to teaching. Peer Instruction is now used in a wide range of science and math courses at the college and secondary level. In this workshop, participants will learn about Peer Instruction, serve as the “class” in which Peer Instruction is demonstrated,... Read more about Peer Instruction: 'brains-on' demo and discussion
Assessing science teaching: are we teaching the right thing?, at Teaching & Learning Lunch, Amherst College (Amherst, MA), Friday, October 5, 2007:
talk_1349.pdf
Discussions of teaching -- even some publications -- abound with anecdotal evidence. Our intuition often supplants a systematic, scientific approach to finding out what works and what doesn't work. Yet, research is increasingly demonstrating that our gut feelings about teaching are often wrong. In this talk I will discuss some research my group has done on gender issues in science courses and on the effectiveness of classroom demonstrations.
How the mind tricks us: visualizations and visual illusions, at Physics Colloquium, Amherst College (Amherst, MA), Thursday, October 4, 2007:
talk_1348.pdf
Neurobiology and cognitive psychology have made great progress in understanding how the mind processes information – in particular visual information. The knowledge we can gain from these fields has important implications for the presentation of visual information and student learning
Subcellular surgery and nanosurgery, at Physics Colloquium, Amherst College (Amherst, MA), Thursday, October 4, 2007:
talk_1347.pdf
We use femtosecond laser pulses to manipulate sub-cellular structures inside live and fixed cells. Using only a few nanojoules of laser pulse energy, we are able to selectively disrupt individual mitochondria in live bovine capillary epithelial cells, and cleave single actin fibers in the cell cytoskeleton network of fixed human fibro-blast cells. We have also used the technique to micromanipulate the neural network of C. Elegans, a small nematode. Our laser scalpel can snip individual axons without causing any damage to surrounding tissue, allowing us to study the function of individual... Read more about Subcellular surgery and nanosurgery

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