Use Of Multiple Physics Education Methods And Learning Activities to Maximize Student Processing Time During Lecture

Combinations of physics education methods have been used effectively to improve learning outcomes in undergraduate courses in a wide range of classroom size. Some mixtures of methods have been shown to be more effective than others. Educators in the Engineering Technologies and Engineering Science Department (authors 1, 2, 3 and 4) at the County College of Morris have been investigating new approaches with a mixture of teaching pedagogies to maximize processing and active learning time in the classroom. Recently (author 1) has found some success in a fifteen-week general astronomy course which had the goal of maximizing learning potential with the use of pre-lecture data-gathering, peer-on-peer in-class activities, discussion-image-based lectures, key-point board work, long-form info review slides, chapter quizzes and detailed chapter study-guides. In addition, a ten-week flipped problem-focussed Summer term mechanics course had promising hands-on student processing success.