How the New Faculty Workshop in 2004 affected my teaching-learning strategies

In this presentation, I will discuss how my experience with the New Faculty Workshop in fall 2004 affected my course offering and teaching-learning strategies in PHYS 103, PHYS 132 and PHYS 331: Fundamentals of Optics courses. PHYS 103, Elements of Physics, is a general education conceptual physics lab course with no prerequisites for non-science majors. PHYS 132 is an introductory algebra-based general physics lab course which deals with electricity, magnetism, waves, light atomic and nuclear physics. PHYS 331, Fundamentals of Optics, is a lab-based course required for physics majors, which was offered for the first time at the MU Department of Physics in fall 2007. I will discuss curricular changes, as well as new teaching-learning and assessment methods implemented in these courses for the first time at our department. I will offer examples of peer group discussions, just in time teaching and the effect of chapter summaries on motivating the students and their participation in problem solving.