Gilbert, Chris
|
Chris Gilbert, known as Gilly, is a graduate student in the Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is interested in the measurement and understanding of plasma waves in the corona of the Sun, with the goal of understanding the heating of the corona and the acceleration of the solar wind. Chris participated in the PDP to learn how to better communicate his research area, and science in general, into accessible, inquiry-motivated lesson plans. It is important to him to be the best teacher he can be. You can find out more about what Chris is doing by checking out www.chrisgilbert.space |
 |
Teaching Activity Summary
Name of Teaching Activity: Akamai Light
Teaching Venue & Date: Akamai 2017
Learners: 29 undergraduate students from Hawaii.
Reflection on how learners engaged with a STEM practice during the inquiry:
Designing and carrying out investigations.
Discovering most relevant variable and controlling the others.
Planning procedures that can make measurements of said variable.
Anticipating sources of error at design-time.
We had two different groups on consecutive days, so we were able to modify the activity between the days. One of the biggest things we changed that helped make the activity much better was that we required them to come up with an investigation plan before we allowed them to go out and work on their investigations. This made sure that they had direction to their investigation, instead of just playing around.
The "sources of error" dimension was relatively under served. We should probably add some kind of thing in the introduction that prepped them for thinking about sources of error. As it was we just mentioned that they should think about it and then moved on.
