Advanced Physics Laboratories Workshop: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Undergraduate laboratories are an integral part of undergraduate education in science and engineering. A recent American Association of Physics Teachers report on teaching laboratories identified main goals of the undergraduate laboratory curriculum, with learning outcomes focused on:  constructing knowledge, modeling, designing experiments, developing practical laboratory skills, collecting, analyzing, and visualizing data, and finally, communicating the results. While significant progress has been achieved in reforming the laboratory components of the introductory-level courses, improving the labs for more specialized upper division physics courses remains a challenge, especially for smaller-size programs and Departments. Obstacles include the cost involved as well as the expertise needed for developing and running highly specialized experiments. This workshop will address the potential ways to overcome some of the challenges.  While the offered workshop format does not allow providing a complete immersion-type experience with the advanced labs, workshop participants will be given opportunity to sample the fragments of several essential lab experiments, in a virtual format, and discuss, in the breakout rooms, the sample tasks, questions and data. Some open-source resources for advanced laboratories (both in-class and virtual/remote options) will be shared with the workshop participants.

Intended Audience: Undergraduate Physics Educators