Regular meetings for Spring 2014:

BERG Research Group: Wednesday 12-1:30pm (every other week starting Feb 12)       Location: Physics Bldg., Rm. 1303

NEXUS Research Team: Thursday 2pm-3:30 pm       Location: Physics Bldg. Rm. 1326 (Vashti's office)

NEXUS Curriculum Development Team: TDA        Location: Physics Bldg. Rm. 1303

TUES Thermodynamics Subgroup: TBA                 Location: Physics Bldg. Rm. 1303

CCLI Organismal Biology Subgroup: TBA

NEXUS Global Assessment Committee: Third Tuesday of month     Conference Call

BUMS Research Team: Mondays 10:00-11:00 AM      Location: Google Hangouts

Meeting Schedule Archives

Agendas:

Next BERG meeting BERG Meeting Schedule  

BERG Meeting Archives

Next NEXUS Curriculum Meeting: Next one unscheduled

NEXUS Curriculum Meeting Archives

NEXUS Research Meeting: Tuesday, December 3, 2013

• PIB results
• Interviews for PIB? (What's the intention with these? Case study interviews again?)
• Plan for energy problems with HHMI rubrics (www.physics.umd.edu/courses/Phys131/fall2013/Homework.html) 

NEXUS Research Meeting: Tuesday, October 29, 2013

• Negative energy paper
• Chemical energy thread paper? 

NEXUS Research Meeting: Tuesday, October 8, 2013

• View Gavin & Violet Data to plan for Ben G's group meeting

NEXUS Research Meeting: Tuesday, October 1, 2013

• Seth Manthey visiting 11/12-11/19
• Connectedness/Outcome Paper Arguments from VS & CT 
• View Violet Data

NEXUS Research Meeting: Tuesday, September 24, 2013

• Plans for ICLS papers

NEXUS Research Meeting: Tuesday, September 10, 2013

• Discuss continuing with case study students from last year (LAs)?
• Interviews--they could bring up teaching or training meetings, 
• Recitation sparse in terms of student-LA interactions for specific LAs as "cases"
• Training Sessions--LAs as students, the way they reflect on worm task on the second time through, very strong positions concerning what is important about the task.  What is really important to convey to students with this? Responses from our students: modeling, dimensions, what we can ignore, (reasoning strategies).  Positive about what the students would take away from a task like this. Reflections on course in a specific way. (Role of LAs in institutionalizing a vision of a course/curriculum).  Then need a regular focus on Qs: What is really important to convey to students? Where does this task address these goals, so where should of emphasis/focus should be in implementing this task?
• Possible continuing case studies (on interesting trajectories)
• Gavin: Role of math, modeling, nature of explanation in phys and bio, heuristics, 
• Elena: connectedness, very meta/reflective about her own understanding
• Anita: most interviews over time with
• Phillip: most interviews over time with
• Betsy: Skepticism, identifies problems actively, articulate about what she knows and doesn't know
• Watch Anita Data (on connectedness)
• Narrowing & Refining research interests/questions
• Consider Research Design on Random Motion & Second Law Thread (BG update on discussion with Zach)
• MPEX data
• Goals & Purpose of Lecture Observations
• Check in about RIOT 

NEXUS Research Meeting: Tuesday, September 3, 2013

• Email for PIB (all), ECLASS (even), & MPEX (odd) surveys. (Redish: open 2pm Tuesday - close 5pm Friday)
• Resolve what is happening for week 1 of classes 
• Revisit possible use of RIOT
• Update on Case Studies
• on disciplinary connections (4 pre-pre interviews done)
• on random motion & second law thread (need to think about protocol)
• on labs (Kim?)

NEXUS Research Meeting: Wednesday, August 28, 2013

• Schedule meetings for the fall semester. 
• Discuss plan for pre/post surveys -- draft of interdisciplinary perceptions survey. JG is making a draft.
• Recitation plan (tentative)
• Which ones do we care about for research purposes? Do instructors know the rest are up to them. JG is making a table 
• Shared understanding about who's job is it to make sure the schedule is on par? 
• Develop list of "must-use" tasks for chemical energy thread assessment
• Develop list of "recommended-use" tasks for assessing mathematical competence 
• Resolve what is happening for week 1 of classes 
• Revisit possible use of RIOT (app not yet modifiable but could be done in FMP maybe?) 
• Look at "reasoning practices" protocols 

NEXUS Research Meeting: Wednesday, August 21, 2013

• Discuss plan for pre/post surveys
• Discuss contents of the perceptions of interdisciplinary bridges
• Purpose: 1) compare with data from prior implementations, 2) better understanding bridges with mathematical reasoning, 3) better understanding mechanisms for support interdisciplinary bridging--responsiveness, 4) connectedness/relevance (pre/post & large-N), 5) assessment for secondary implementations of our IPLS curriculum (or other IPLS curricula), 6) new research directions about students' perceptions of modeling across the disciplines.
• MPEX interdisciplinary cluster as is 11Qs
• Adding connectedness, relevance and utility questions (for prior end-of-term surveys)
• Adding parallel questions to the general math that include "calculations with numbers" "equations" separately (for math-bio & math-phys = 20Qs); this adds 16Qs; pare-down math to 3Q --> 12Q
• coordinating graph with physical picture... (along a specific dimension that we think we impact)
• numerical estimation (along a specific dimension that we think we impact)
• coordinate physical picture with equations or coordinating "words" with equations
• engagement with math (or in relation to particular disciplines)
• TABLE Format (to reduce the burden on students).
• Utility of simple models (across biology & physics); "real" or "realistic"
• CT worm interview
• Peanut butter model of charge distributions (chunky versus smooth)
• Egg lecture discussion
• Questions from "Research on Integrated Science Curriculum" (RISC) assessment, a survey out of Carleton College that KACI sent.
• Consider how Lopatto's work with RISC is similar or different from what we are intending to assess
• Develop more detailed plan for qualitative data collection
• pre interviews with case study students? (on modeling, reasoning skills)
• present three representations/models of DNA (DNA as spring, DNA as double helix); why do we need two models? why do we have three models? what is this useful for? what is the purpose of this representation? (what ideas is this representation tied to?) how does this happen?
• Other representations in Biology that might be central: phylogenetic trees, Hardy Weinberg Eqs.
• Other representations from Physics (Newton's Laws... free body diagrams)
• present three "models" of diffusion (osmosis, diagrammatic and equations--Fick's Law)
• present representations/models of "like attracts like"
• grounded in things that students would likely "seen" and see what ideas they see as related these "representations"
• what is the problem that these representations useful for?  what are the affordances and constraints of these representations? (energy interviews--phenomena given and they generate representations and reflect on them; Exam question--not too useful...)
• when are the explanations they generate mechanistic... (in which contexts and with which phenomena); when are they tools for "calculating"?
• A shift in what the representations represent?   What would be the interesting "shifts"?
• What are the "tools" for modeling that our students are arriving to our course with? It is not that they "don't know how to do these practices," it is just that this is a practices that is tied to particular contexts... Might help us see "scientific reasoning practices" in ways that we have struggled to investigate in the past.
• need undergraduates?? for what exactly?
• Develop list of "must-use" tasks for chemical energy thread assessment
• Develop list of "recommended-use" tasks for assessing mathematical competence 

NEXUS Research Meeting: Wednesday, July 31, 2013

• Watch energy data clip on seeking connections, etc.
• Share AJP Paper Outlines
• Focused discussion chemical energy thread paper

NEXUS Research Meeting: Wednesday, July 24, 2013

• When is Julia visiting? 
• Coming 2x - once during the week of the 5th, once during the week of the 12th (maybe the first week of August instead?)
• Logistics? Staying?
• talking to JR/Kaci?
• BD's place for the week of the 5th...VS's place? 
• Purpose of the visit? 
• Paper stuff - AJP special issue; thinking about paper plans and concretely about outlines and authorship and venues (do this one first...)
• Focus in on NEXUS stuff in a concentrated way
• Assessment/research stuff with Eric (do this the 2nd visit) -- what kind of surveys we should be giving and not? rethinking some of the MPEX stuff (from JG's research) 
• HHMI assessment plan -- what tasks and what rubrics do we need? (Chem Energy Thread)
• Survey data collection and what will be its purpose 
• Labs...(how does this add to the data collection load?)....And who will be in charge?
• (Eric wants a meeting in week 1 to talk about rubrics & math competency stuff) 
• Logistics on meetings over the next couple of weeks 
• AJP special issue paper plans
• BD - Chem Energy Thread paper...mostly full draft out without student data section...(no feedback on it at this point)
• Q's:  - How do broader ideas behind curriculum development fit into this paper? (JG: doing double-duty with an "overview" paper)
• JG volunteering to write some of this behind-the-scenes work (won't happen until the week of the 5th)
• Eric & VS will read it more carefully 
• Overview paper on design of an IPLS course
• Maybe JR was impacted by our talks and might be shifted in thinking about the overview paper...where content is one of the section...
• VS will write an outline to send to JR/CT/JG for feedback... (today or tomorrow)
• What's it about?
• Outcomes of design research...we've learned that these are some principles that have helped us design a course...here's some evidence that that is happening...and they're not losing other things we care about...
• What would be the role of design research in this paper? We did this thing...you could do it too if you wanted... 
• Data...same as in the invited talk...end of term survey & MPEX data... 
• Entropy is NOT entropy
• Make apparent the problem that the disciplines are talking about entropy in very different ways; free energy is a way of building bridges between the ways of talking about entropy
• Data: (1) faculty interviews -- clear differences in the disciplinary differences in how they talk about entropy -- physicists: discussions of probabilities and microstates; biologists: statements of disorder and randomness; chemists: reaction thermodynamics, helps to determine spontaneity of reactions (2) students data from Pre/Post thermo unit where they described what entropy is (3) textbook data (3 standard textbook that BG used)
• Student data: Pre --  they basically only say "disorder" or "chaos"; when apply it to scenarios it demonstrates the limitations of these metaphors. They're sense of what entropy is is "completely insufficient" for helping them to reason about the scenarios presented. Post (?) -- in the essay question about picking your favorite formulation students are able to leverage all sorts of nice metaphors/analogies successfully.
• Ok, so that's the problem. What to do with it? Talk about all of them!! And make explicit connections between the free energy equation. 
• VS & BD will play very supporting roles in working on this...
• Need to get IRB in for the faculty interview pieces so that we can actually publish this data... 
• Energy is not energy is not energy paper is NOT going to try to happen for the special issue
• *Note*: KM and WL are writing a paper on the labs (BG knows this is being worked on)
• Resource letter is on track to be submitted before the end of August 
• Eric rubric stuff & assessment questions
• Eric has rubric's for the list on the  HHMI Assessment Tools
• rewriting MPEX - interdisciplinary cluster (more specific questions)
• what do students mean by "math" in answering these questions?
• looking through "the course" and trying to get a handle on the ways that mathematical reasoning plays a role in our course -- in the tasks (homeworks, quizzes, exams) that we ask students to think through? What kind of mathematical competency are they asking students to do?
• Quantitative reasoning as a thread 
• Initial data collection thoughts?
• BD is DONE with data collection  
• Feedback from AAPT/PERC?  

NEXUS Research Meeting: Wednesday, July 10, 2013

• Feedback on Julia's AAPT poster

NEXUS Research Meeting: Wednesday, July 3, 2013

• Discuss EHR CORE Proposal
• Narrative
• Rationale
• Background Literature
• Research Design
• Analytical Approach
• Institutional Letters of Support
• Advisory Board Letters of Support
• Discuss Violet Data (central pilot data for the proposal?)
• AERA deadline: July 22! (because organizing this conference takes as long as it does to gestate a human baby!) (In Philly)
• Given that we already have a bunch of posters - I propose interactive poster symposium on interdisciplinary stuff (JG) 
• NARST deadline: August 15th - Pittsburg 

NEXUS Research Meeting Archives 

Special meetings:

Global Assessment Committee Meeting at HHMI, Feb. 6-8, 2013

Meeting with Charles Henderson Feb. 5, 2013

Full NEXUS Assessment Meeting at HHMI, September 13-14

January NEXUS meeting, 2012

Assessment Meeting with David Hanauer, Nov. 16, 2011

Meeting Notes:

1. Assessment design

• identifying important assessment themes and design assessment tasks to pilot next year
• each competency assessed multiple times in assessment cycles
• attaching targeted assessments to quizzes/HW
• keeping track of assessment targets and how they evolve

2. Summative assessment of "functional interdisciplinarity"

3. Following students longitudinally (multiple tasks and interviews) in order to attempt to disentangle competencies, epistemologies, affect….

4. To what extent do research/assessment overlap?

5. Assessment of the course

• are tasks eliciting what we want them to?
• course component for scale up