BERG > Project NEXUS UMCP > Papers and Presentations
Contributed poster to be presented at AAPT Summer National Meeting, Portland OR, July 2013.
NEXUS/Physics: Rethinking physics for biology and premed students
E. F. Redish, V. Sawtelle, C. Turpen, J. Svoboda-Gouvea, B. Dreyfus, & B. Geller
Physicists, biologists, and science education specialists at the University of Maryland are redesigning Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences as part of the National Experiment on Undergraduate Science (NEXUS).[1] Our objective is to create a course in which the connections between physics and biology feel authentic to students and disciplinary experts and that emphasizes skills that are the goal of traditional physics instruction: symbolic reasoning, blending mathematical and qualitative thinking, abstraction to the level of toy models to build intuitions, and order-of-magnitude estimation. The content includes topics relevant to biology, such as diffusion, fluid dynamics, and chemical binding. The pedagogy focuses on creating opportunities for students to develop a coherent understanding of core concepts and competencies. These changes are coordinating with reforms in biology, chemistry, and mathematics, so that learning physics supports and is supported by learning in other science classes.
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