Center for Teaching & Learning Jonathan Friedman (Physics)

Typically, there is no lab the first week of class (Physics 117), but I intend to still have a full lab meeting devoted to orientation, team building and motivation.  There will be two major activities that will take place, one an ice breaker, the other a “values affirmation” activity.

The ice breaker will be a version of the “airplane game” in which students interview (and are interviewed by) each other.  They ask a series of questions (some uniform, like name, major, hometown, and some of their own devising – nothing too personal!).  After the interviews, the students will return to the main zoom room to introduce their interviewees to the class and be introduced themselves. 

I expect this activity will help the students to be more comfortable working with others in the class whom they now know to a small degree and that this comfort will make them more productive in lab and, hopefully, enjoy what they are learning.  Hopefully, there will be a smoother adjustment to remote labs and the students will come to view me as someone who is interested in their well being, not just a taskmaster who commands them to perform certain activities every week.

Implementing this activity should be straightforward.  I will come up with a slide of basic instructions that I will share with students as I introduce the activity.   I will also plan out a model introduction, introducing the lab TA to them.  I will create a set up breakout rooms for the students to do the interviews, with two students in each room for 5 minutes.  Then, I will move the students into other rooms for another 5 minutes in such a way that the interviewee from original  room 1 now becomes the interviewer for the new room 2, etc., while all of the original interviewers stay in their original room but now become interviewees.  If there are an odd number of students, I will participate as an interviewer/ee.  After these two breakout sessions, I will pick some student at random (whoever is in the square to the right to me on zoom to start the introductions.  The person they introduce will do the next introduction, etc. until we have gone all the way back to the first person.  (I might need zoom help to figure out how to bring the square of the person being introduced up to the front for everyone, assuming that is possible.)  If I have not yet been introduced, I will let the TA introduce me at the end.

The next activity will be a values affirmation activity along the lines of the This I Believe activity discussed in this module.  This is based on an activity that I have used a few times when teaching intro classes, which follows education literature on a similar practice used in Physics classes at other institutions.  The students are given a list of words unrelated to course content (like family, music, athletics, friendship).  They are asked to choose one to three of the words that are important to them and then to write a paragraph or two about why each is important.  They will be given 25 minutes to write; they are put into breakout rooms while they do this.  I will advise them to turn off their speaker, mic and camera while they are writing and turn them off when they are done.  That way if they finish before the 25 minutes are over, they can chat with each other and get to know each other informally instead getting distracted with other activities.  They are given credit for turning in the assignment.  The writing is commented on (thanks for sharing this about yourself, etc.), but it is not graded.  The assignment is turned in on moodle.  Depending on enrollments and time, we may come back into the main room and each student can read a portion of their assignment (picking just one of their chosen words).  I will let zoom determine the order (person to my right, then person to their right, etc.).

In addition to the above activities, when we start actual labs, students will be asked to work together in pairs (or, possibly, larger groups).  This will be rather awkward for a remote lab.  Each student will have their own lab kit and working somewhat separately and yet they will be asked to collaborate, helping each other troubleshoot and trying to answer questions posed together.  In principle, they could each work alone, but by working together they will have support as the struggle to overcome obstacles and to check each other’s thinking and approaches.