Jan van der Veen - University of Twente

Trends in Physics Teaching (for Engineering Education)

Trends in Physics Teaching (for Engineering Education) will zoom in on two aspects that gained ground the last decade:

(1) Modelling and computational physics which developed as a third pillar next to theoretical and experimental methods.

(2) The introduction of project based learning with design aspects and maker project approaches. Through cases and literature basic rules will be clarified for those attempting to implement or improve physics courses. Examples will show what this means when connecting these rules with physics  content.

Jan van der Veen graduated in Physics at the University of Groningen. After teaching physics and mathematics he started working on applications of ICT in Higher Education, project based learning and professional development at the University of Twente. After finishing his PhD on Web-based learning for project groups in Higher Education, he now works as an associate professor at ELAN, performing science and engineering education research and teacher training for secondary and higher education. In the period 2010-2014 he was Director of Education of the teacher training programs. Jan chaired the 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education (2014-2018) in which the 4 Dutch technical universities work together on innovating and researching engineering education.

Christian Kautz - TU Hamburg Harburg

Integrating multiple active-learning techniques into a single course:  PI, JiTT and Tutorials

Research in various STEM disciplines has found that traditional lectures have limited success in addressing students’ systematic difficulties with the material and in changing their views about natural and technical phenomena.  Instructional methods that have been shown to improve student understanding and can be implemented even in large lecture courses include Peer Instruction (i.e., having students discuss conceptual questions during class time), Just-in-Time Teaching (i.e., requiring students to read material before class and to submit specific questions), and Tutorials (a set of collaborative worksheets that helps students master relevant concepts).  This presentation will describe these methods, illustrate how they can be implemented in the same course, and demonstrate their effectiveness with data gathered from various courses.

Christian H. Kautz received a MSc (“Diplom”) degree in physics from Hamburg University in Hamburg, Germany, and a PhD degree in physics from the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) in 1999, for research on student understanding in introductory physics. He taught at Syracuse University from 1999 to 2002, and since then has been working at Hamburg University of Technology, where he currently holds an associate professorship and leads the Engineering Education Research Group.  In this position, he has been teaching introductory engineering courses such as Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering, Engineering Mechanics and Engineering Thermodynamics, as well as professional development seminars focusing on the teaching of math, science and engineering topics.  His current research interests include student understanding in first-year engineering courses and the development of broader reasoning skills for technical fields.