CPET Spring Seminar with Professor Laura Tucker

Title: Research and reality: similar implementations of interactive classroom learning with dissimilar outcomes

A body of literature in physics education shows that students taught with interactive methods have higher gains in content knowledge and retention in STEM majors. While these results include data from a variety of classrooms, instructors, and student populations, and show very strong trends, results from individual classrooms can vary. We will discuss implementations of very similar classroom techniques by the same instructor, with similar student populations, but which resulted in surprisingly different student response.

Speaker Bio: Laura Tucker is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Physics at University of California, Irvine (UCI) and an education researcher with a focus on interactive classroom strategies, student retention, and educational technology. After earning both undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics, Laura transitioned into science education as a post-doc at Harvard University with Eric Mazur and Todd Zickler. Currently at UCI, she is scaling research-based teaching methods to larger class sizes and measuring success in students' content knowledge and shifts in attitudes towards science.