Development of Hands-on Models and Demonstrations for Education and Research

Invited Speaker: Gary Glesener (UCLA)
Date: January 10, 2008
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Venue: 3853 Slichter (the IGPP seminar room)

Abstract

Since 2005, faculty from the Department of Earth and Space Sciences at UCLA have supported the development of hands-on in-class demonstrations (ICDs) along with research models fabricated within the Department in the Modeling and Educational Demonstration Laboratory (MEDL). In the area of education, these ICDs have been shown to be successful by raising student interest and improving student performances on tests and coursework in our introductory undergraduate courses. By developing new and existing ICDs in the MEDL, we have learned ways to make our ICDs more effective in the classroom by focusing on the concepts we want to teach and limiting distraction. The prototyping stage during the fabrication process is the most important stage when developing models and demonstrations. The MEDL has also assisted with the early development of research models as well. The MEDL has proved to be a valuable asset for faculty and researchers by providing materials that allow them to test or evaluate hypotheses using simple and inexpensive prototypes. I will be discussing some of these lessons learned in the MEDL and demonstrating several recently developed ICDs as examples.