Physics and Astronomy Courses

Physics and astronomy courses are the main staples of my teaching career. In the past few years, I have paid special attention to exploring how new technologies can be used in my ASTR 1040 courses, although this is beginning to bleed through to other courses. I took the WSU Online Blended Learning class and used the opportunity to develop both a flipped course and a fully online course. After taking the WSU Online Master Online Teacher course, I merged some of these concepts into my blended course, which is the current incarnation. I experimented with online video lectures, student video presentations, pre- and post-activity quizzes, and course discussions. After all of that, I've settled on using a combination of discussions (to encourage reading of the course materials), pre- and post-activity quizes, and in-class activities twice per week.

The rest of my course materials contain more traditional elements, though I have found the reading discussions in Canvas to be popular with the PHYS 2220 students. All of my courses involve in-class activities (or "flipped" elements that is the current fashion). Below please find the direct links to my ASTR1040 Canvas courses (login required) and pdf versions of my other course materials.

Geoscience Courses

I've had the opportunity to teach the Meteorology course for Geosciences several times. Similar to my astronomy courses, it relies heavily on discussions and in-class activities. Since my specialty is atmosphere science rather than traditional meteorology, the focus shifts to be more about planetary climates with Earth as a well studied example while still adhering to the Natural Science General Education Outcomes. This has lead to discussions of merging the Oceanography course with Meteorology course into something titled Oceans and Atmospheres. I imagine I would expand heavily on the planetary science theme if asked to teach such a course.

    Honors Courses

    I've taught two honors courses for Weber State, one on Astrobiology and the other called The Copernican Principle - Our Place in the Cosmos. Both of these courses are activity and project based with extensive writing assignments. For the Cosmos class we developed a student blog (linked below) where they were required to not only write on a given project but post it and distribute through social media. It was impressive to see the number of hits we got to the site, but also how it improved the writing since the students knew they were writing for a wider audience. Encouraging this type of creativity and expression is something I would like to develop in my other courses.

    Other Courses

    Just for fun, I included some documentation on a course I taught at the Bellwether Homestead School. 

    Courses Taken

    As part of my ongoing education on how students learn, I am continuing to take courses outside of my discipline. In addition to the professional development courses from WSU Online, I've taken two week-long professional cheese making courses at Utah State University and this past summer I took a course in Creative Writing from Siân Griffiths. I've found it remarkable that students who are often cautious and unsure in an Astronomy course can turn into confident learners when they are in their environment. The creative writing course taught me a valuable lesson in confidence and how quickly it can erode when you are faced with peer review if you are uncertain of your abilities. I see these classes as much a part of my teaching as the ones I offer, since I plan to take elements of each of these into my courses. I've become fascinated with the idea of workshopping solutions to physics problems like we workshopped our stories in Dr. Griffiths course.