Welcome to season two of the POGLE Podcast. I'm Matt Tarca, producer of the POGLE Podcast for the POGLE Project.
POGLE stands for Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning, a student-centered approach that guides students in constructing their own understanding of content
and helps them develop important skills such as teamwork, communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving.
The POGLE Podcast is an ongoing conversation from the POGLE Project that celebrates innovative educators both in and out of the classroom.
This podcast is a special episode we'd like to share with you as part of our outreach to other like-minded organizations and educators.
Today, co-host Alex Gruschow, who is a professor of chemistry at Rider University and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,
interviews Dr. Brad Moser, a lab technician and instructor of physics at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.
He is also the host of a podcast called Physics Alive, where he sparks new life into the physics classroom.
Dr. Moser speaks with researchers and textbook authors on the frontiers of physics education,
life science and health professionals who use physics on an everyday basis,
designers and engineers who learn from the natural world,
teachers who employ innovative and active learning styles, and students who want the most out of their education.
More details about the podcast can be found at www.physicsalive.com.
Brad and Alex, thank you for being here today to discuss the work of Physics Alive.
And Alex, I will now pass the baton over to you.
Hello and welcome to the POGLE Podcast.
Today, I am talking with Dr. Bradley Moser, who is a professor at Hamilton College in physics.
And we're interviewing Brad today because he runs a podcast of his own.
And so, you know, we podcast people all like to sort of connect with one another.
His podcast is called Physics Alive.
And we're going to get to that in a little bit and have him describe a little bit about the podcast.
Hello, Brad. How are you doing?
Hello. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast.
I'm really looking forward to this conversation and sharing some interdisciplinary type of ideas.
Okay, great. So can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in teaching physics?
Yeah, it was it was kind of a mild mannered approach.
I went to graduate school thinking I was going to go a kind of a traditional research direction.
And the story I often tell is that the days when I had to get up and do research in the lab with my graduate advisor were the days I had a hard time getting out of bed.
I would maybe drag myself to campus by 10 o'clock in the morning and begrudgingly stay late.
But then when I had a chance to teach a lecture course, I found myself staying up till midnight planning for it and excitedly waking up in the morning to go off to the class.
And I found, wow, there's there's something that's really pulling me into this.
And honestly, I can't tell you why that is.
I mean, if any of us can really find the true meaning of why we're interested in what we're interested in, that would be an interesting study that we figured out.
So I don't know why I'm called to it so much, but I'm just really fascinated by education, by by the ideas that I found.
And and as I was getting into teaching in the classroom, I think my experience at sort of the bigger research based institutions and as a teaching assistant, I would sit in on the big lecture courses and see the slides
was in by and the students blank stares and and then helping them in the office hours and helping them prepare for exams. And they're so confused. They haven't gotten anything. They're just trying to memorize what they can. And I'm thinking this can't be the best way.
This this doesn't make sense. And even I thought back on my own education and said I had a lot of great teachers, but it was all lecture based.
And I really don't remember a thing of what I learned from any of those classes. It's like, is the way we're doing things really working?
And that's when I started digging into the literature and I discovered physics education research.
And I think the first book that I one of the first books I stumbled upon was Pure Instruction by Eric Mazur and and about how to use clickers in the classroom and about a whole different type of pedagogy centered on asking questions.
And I think that's just led me further and further down the rabbit hole and being really interested in that.
And then that was in 2008 that I discovered that. And then in 2010 when I got my first job outside of aftergraduate school, I had an opportunity to do a modeling instruction workshop and I know we'll talk about that a little bit more later and some of the connections
that might or comparisons with Poggle. And that really cinched it for me that it's like, wow, there really is a different better a different way a better way that has structure that has has meaning that helps students construct what they're learning.
And it's just been I'm kind of all in since that point.
Right. And, and your, your description of the rabbit hole is not an uncommon thing among those of us who are seriously interested in teaching within our disciplines, particularly within the STEM disciplines as separate from, you know, what we do when we're working in our in our research
laboratories.
So, I mean, not only you were you somehow called to teaching, but you seem to be interested in how students are learning.
Can you talk a little bit about sort of what you've been thinking about in that realm like not just that they're learning because you know, I also recall those slides whizzing by although it was, we didn't have the PowerPoint technology when I was in graduate school,
but it was a similar experience.
But I, you know, I still managed to learn stuff but I look at students today and I sort of wonder how are they learning, and how is that different from what I was doing.
I think that we learned stuff in the discipline that we were interested in. And maybe outside of that we didn't learn as much, or we, we got by, maybe we got a's in the class but in hindsight maybe we didn't feel like we learned quite as much.
I know I have that feeling. And, you know, one piece and all to say is like a lot of my work that I do is thinking about curriculum design.
And, yeah, I guess about about what's in the classroom and how I'm doing it so I think about a lot about what, what will motivate students.
And I had a very particular audience. When I got to the University of New England I'm currently at Hamilton College but when I got to University of New England.
I started teaching, I discovered over, over the first couple of years that the audience I really had was a lot of the, the pre health professions types of students, we didn't have a physics major. So I wasn't thinking about how to how to teach the majors I was thinking about all these people who are in my class that don't want to be there.
And what could I do to help them feel like they wanted to be there more.
And it was that motivation piece, I couldn't. I found that modeling instruction, instruction as an approach helped it definitely it kept the students being active and engaged in the classroom.
There was a lot of active learning pieces to it.
But it still didn't have the motivation piece they were still just taking physics because they had to take physics. So it was when I began to look into what's the physics that they could connect with.
And looking at the physics, the human body, looking at the physics of, of medicine, of the equipment that's out there.
That was where that connection could begin to be made and and students were beginning to then see that that this can be relevant to them.
And that really drew some more of them in and then to have on top of that, a structure a constructivist type of approach to learning. I felt like I was beginning to tap into kind of the best of two worlds.
Yeah, so can you describe a little bit about this, you know, what does it look like in your in your physics, physics lab or your classroom, where you're doing this what you call modeling instruction.
I'm going to tell I'm going to tell two stories about that because what I'm doing now looks different than what I was able to do before.
So when I was at the University of New England, I came in and they were just all beginning, like all the there were four faculty members in physics, and we had just they had just transitioned over to completely modeling.
So that's a lab and lecture are combined into one so instead of three hours of lecture one hour a week. Three one hour sessions of lecture, and then a three hour lab instead it was two three hour lab blocks, or possibly three two hour lab blocks, so the students were always meeting in the same space with the same instructor.
There were there were no thinking about it's like well do I get the lab done before I teach in a lecture or they will they see the material after so as I was with them all the time.
And the labs were an integral part of the modeling curriculum so in modeling instruction we have these, what are called paradigm labs. So it's, we come in and we look at you know the classic one where we start is the tumble buggy, so we have this little electronic cart that goes across the floor at a constant velocity.
And but we have no vocabulary we don't know the word velocity we don't know acceleration we know nothing. So from the lab we begin to build that vocabulary that the students sort of with the guidance of the instructor design an experiment that will eventually lead them to that
they'll, they, there's always a problem statement for each lab how does blank depend on blank how does position depend on time is how we start in that tumble buggy lab.
And then they sort of partially design the experiment themselves, and and they they learn how to make multiple representations from the experiment so they make a graph from that so there's the graphical representation.
They do a line of best fit and they create a mathematical model, so it's our mathematical representation. There's a diagrammatic representation so there's always some type of picture that we try to put to it.
In the case of motion we have these pictures called motion maps that allow us to sort of instead of just drawing a car that has little lines behind it to show it going fast that we have a sort of how any of us would try to draw something moving.
Instead we have a very specific mapping out of point after point after point on on a line graph that shows a particular type of motion. And then finally a verbal representation we try to get the students to a point where they are talking in a common
vocabulary so that everybody can understand what we're all saying.
So the sound I mean it sounds very much like a pope, you know, for our Poggle listeners it sounds very much like a Poggle activity but you're really instead of having model data in front of you like we do usually in a lot of our activities it starts with
data, you're actually just starting in the laboratory saying okay I want to try something out, gathering some data and then trying to build a concept or an idea on on top of that.
Exactly. Yeah, so then, after, so we built all these representations for that particular experiment. And so we built we built our model.
And then we the last kind of stage is the deployment of the model, and this is what looks like could look like more what you know traditional problem solving would be. And it's a lot of it's a lot of group work so there's always whiteboards in the lab groups
are working together to solve problems based on these models.
And then eventually once we get through a particular unit, we move on and say, Well, now let's look at something rolling down a ramp. And what we see is that the constant velocity model, no longer works.
We need to develop a new model we need to develop a model of constant acceleration, and then the modeling cycle can continues again with with a new topic.
Okay. And so then, this also overlying all this is, you know, it is sort of a line of questioning that it's already been constructed for the students to sort of follow along or is this more open ended.
Open ended in the sense that they get a little bit of ownership over what the experiment design looks like a little bit because we're sort of working together to determine what are the best problem statements it's, it's still a little prescribed
in a way, but the sense making there, they're kind of given a framework for how to go about that, but but we really put the onus on them to make sense of what it is that we're looking at and we can kind of guide them with, with the with the questions
with unit analysis with you know what do we think of the physics here. So we're kind of pushing them in that direction but we really make them construct the models themselves.
And so then, you know, the idea is once they once they've sort of developed the models, then in principle then they go off and do other problem solving like I mean you have like traditional homework and that sort of stuff.
So at that point, the modeling community has a workbook that it, it hands to everybody who does the modeling workshops, so there's there is a standard modeling problem base workbook that we work through and, and of course you can, you know I
have materials from other resources but I really love that that framework because a lot of it's really about it's not just problems where you would be able to plug in numbers and software things but there's a lot of graphing, like you had there's a lot of
drawing graphs, making sense of that doing graphical analysis there's lots of showing pictures and showing that you're making sense across all of these four different representations, right, not just the mathematical right and that usually helps the different
students, because you know some students, you can show them an equation, and they get it. Although, usually those are the physicists, exactly.
And then, then the student who just like until you show them a picture of a graph they just, they don't see that representation. So, that's interesting.
So, I want to, I want to turn now to this podcast thing so you started doing this physics alive podcast in the middle of a pandemic. And I was sort of wondering, is this something that you just sort of woke up today it's like I'm in the middle of the
pandemic. I'm not doing anything that I would normally be doing so I'm going to start a podcast, or was it like, this is something that's been brewing in the back of your mind for a while, and this seemed like the right time to launch.
It's a complicated answer and I can't give you all the details because I haven't even sorted them all out myself but there were there were a couple of setbacks in my life.
And it just, it got me to thinking about what, what are some other things that I could be doing if I think the pandemic brought up a lot of questions about, you know what, what are the jobs we move forward with you know how secure is my position you know what's
going to be moving forward. And there was, there was, there was kind of a piece that went through me of, it's like, what if I would need to support myself along the way, what what if, what if my teaching position doesn't necessarily last being a non tenure track position
at Hamilton College right now, you know, which is something I'm not actually afraid of, but, you know, all these questions kind of come up and I think, what are some other things I could be doing.
Yeah, we all had those questions. Yeah. I mean even those of us who are tenured faculty we just had no idea what was really going to happen so this is not an uncommon feeling.
So, so I dug into some, you know, because I love podcasts, I started listening to a couple it was like kind of some more entrepreneurial podcast.
And I heard some really interesting ones with folks who were kind of talking about it's like start a podcast it's like here's how easy it is and what you can do with that and you know how down the road down the road if it does well it's like you know that could be your
living, and you know that kind of you know piqued my interest and.
And I thought well what would I, what would I make a podcast about, and like that was where the, it was apparently already brewing in the back of my mind to do something like this.
I think when I, when I first started getting into the physics education research literature, and, and got my first position out of graduate school that I was already thinking I'm going to write a book someday.
I'm not quite sure what the topic is yet so I'm not ready to write it, but I feel like it's going to be on education research somehow. So there was a there was at least this part of me that I didn't want to be the researcher that was trying to determine new ways of doing things
in the classroom. I was interested in being the one who helped disseminate that information to be the one who could who could kind of distill it for people to make sense of and to help them make decisions on what they can be doing in their classroom because all of us have
different styles that we would feel comfortable with teaching. All of us are interested in doing different things so there's there's no one model fits all.
And, and I'm just so interested in what are all the different models what works for me what might work for you. And how can I get all of that information in one place for somebody. And, you know, and, you know, 10 years ago for me that was in a book.
Now it turned out it's like that can be in a podcast, because it's a place where, you know, I mean it's like a book it's like an audio book.
And so I'm writing, I do a lot of writing for for each episode in sort of the introduction and the research that I do. But then, then getting to talk to people.
I think that's been one of my real joys is like getting to talk to, to, to these people doing this this awesome work.
Yeah, I think that that's kind of how I got into it. It's like there was a sort of multiple directions happening at once, partly because of the pandemic as well that right that got me going this direction.
It catalyzed a lot of different things I'm sure. Yeah, a lot of different people so you, I mean you talk a lot about physics education but not all of your podcasts are, you know, with physics educators or education researchers.
Can you tell us a little bit about like the kinds of people that come on to your show.
I have so many ideas for episodes and not nearly enough time. I have so many hopes for what what the the podcast might do.
So, I think a lot of what it has been centered on is talking with with folks who are who are doing particular things in the field of education so one type is what are some of the big ideas happening.
I think very recently I had a chance to talk with physics Nobel laureate, Carl Wyman, and, and he's, you know, not only was that he won the Nobel Prize in physics for for his atomic molecular and optical physics research, but he's also gone on to do amazing
things with education so that that's kind of like a higher level piece. I want to talk to people about modeling instruction I want to talk to people about the investigative science learning environment.
And I think that came out of Rutgers. I want to talk to people outside of physics and what they're doing so this is why I want one of this connection with the POGAL group because when I was at the University of New England I had a colleague there who, who was using
organic chemistry over the summers, and we would compare notes a lot so that that was how I was first introduced to the to to what this POGAL project is doing and I was always been interested in that and wanting to learn more.
So there's kind of these, I would say there's kind of these higher level ones that I do, then there's sort of more the the middle of, like, what are some specific topics you know I had a chance to talk with someone who created a physics based board game that could replace a lab on
different vectors. I had a chance to talk to somebody who has a YouTube channel on coding, how to bring code computational physics into the classroom, which was a place that I had a little bit less comfort myself and and connecting with this individual
and it really helped me to to really gain an appreciation for computation and less fear to be able to do it myself. So there's been able, you know, kind of talking to that mid level of, you know, here are very specific things we might do in the classroom.
But another one of my big interests and I really hope to keep tackling this more is the human side of education. One of the pieces I've really been interested in is kind of mindfulness and meditation, and so some of my solo episodes I brought some pieces
of that in actually had one episode where I led a guided meditation for teachers who are beginning a new semester. And, and I really want to take some time to kind of investigate, you know, our own well being, and what we can do to help ourselves from not burning out,
which is something that that I experienced previously and kind of led me to change jobs from one place to another.
Right. And actually, you know, I would also appreciate the episode on mindfulness at the middle and later parts of the semester.
Exactly. Yeah. At all parts of the semester, all parts of the semester have their own, you know, separate challenges so that's very interesting.
I did notice, you know, some of your episodes you had, you were interviewing people, and other times you would go and do your own solo podcast and was surprised at how easy the solo podcast sounded, can you tell us a little bit about like, you know, usually,
I mean, the whole formula for a podcast is you have to have a conversation. You know, and so talking with, you know, by yourself for, you know, 20, 20, 30 minutes to a microphone and then, you know, how does that how does that work for you, I mean, clearly you writing out a script and things like that, how did that go.
I write out a probably a bullet point list with certain things I want to cover.
I think that the solo episodes I've done have emerged from something that has gone on around me, some event that that happened on my campus, some interaction that happened between students, something that I read about in the Chronicle of Higher Education, something that came about
in my life that got me thinking, saying, hmm, I would really like to explore that idea, and what I know about it, and maybe I can find a few other articles online, you know, not necessarily diving into the peer review literature, but just sort of more on kind of that that human side of things.
And I find that, you know, I spend maybe a week kind of mauling these things over my head, I jot a few notes down, and then when I sit down at the microphone, I just, I just try to pretend like I'm like writing a journal entry, and then just just talk about it.
And I find that I'm able to do that. I don't know, I think it's a, I think a lot of us in education, and maybe particularly science education, I think there's a lot of introverts there.
But I think we have the ability to, I don't know, to speak to an empty space or to speak to a classroom.
And it's not that, I feel like sometimes that the introvert challenge is to try to talk with five people at once.
But when it's one on one, and you and me just talking to a microphone is sort of a one on one.
It comes fairly naturally. Are you going to start doing some some solo episodes too?
That was not in our plan for the Poggle podcast, I would have to do a lot more preparation than I do already.
You know, for our episodes.
You know, and besides I don't think, you know, a lot of people want to listen to me for a whole half hour at a stretch. My students don't want to that's why they really like Poggle because they don't have to listen to me for a whole classroom.
So, you know, I just want to sort of close this out. So you've been doing this podcast now, I guess it's a little bit more than a year now, right?
Just over a year. Yeah.
So can you tell me something, you know, that you that you learned from doing this that you would otherwise have not, you know, have learned in your own exploration of physics and physics teaching.
One of the things I've got out of this for myself is networking.
I've, I've been terrible at that. And, you know, I've gone to the American Association of Physics Teachers conferences, the APT, that's sort of the big place where physics teachers will go and gather and, you know, I would go with a colleague or two and I would spend my whole time with them and I would never get out and talk to anybody.
It was, you know, I wasn't doing the networking part well.
But I found that we introverts don't network very well.
No. But somehow at these conferences, I saw people getting together and talking.
And, and I just didn't come to me. But, but now that I'm, it's very easy for me to reach out and say, I really want to talk to you about what you're doing. And then we have this conversation, and now I'm beginning to make all of these these connections and and learning so much of my own.
I mean, I think that's one of the great pieces how much I am learning from from others and that's been, that's always been the selfish part of this that I am partly creating this podcast because I wish there was a podcast that was doing what I'm doing.
But, but there isn't.
So, so I'm going to make it. And I'm going to get out of it what I would have liked to have gotten out of it, which is hearing what what folks are doing in the community, learning for myself and learning what what are the pieces that I would like to pick up for myself.
You know, I think I mentioned that the coding aspect was was one of one of them.
This this board game was another one. And another piece actually to go back to your previous question but it relates to this is the piece about diversity, equity and inclusion, and and how important that is in our culture right now and that I really want to be involved
with that and this podcast is a way to do that, because certainly stem fields have been predominantly white and male for a long time and it's still very slowly changing.
And, and I want to be part of a solution to creating a more welcoming environments for everybody, and to help bring in groups of people that have have not otherwise really found a place in the field. And there's a lot of great work going on out there and I've been definitely
trying to reach out to folks doing that work to to help to help play a role in what way I can in that aspect as well.
Well, at the, at the very least, giving you know more voice to those groups, so that they can, you know, get their message out.
I think that that you know that that's something that we've been working on part in the POGAL project as well, you know, it's just trying to connect people so that they don't feel like they're left on the sidelines.
Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. Well, Brad Moser I want to thank you for joining us today on the POGAL podcast.
It's been a real pleasure it's been interesting to hear about what you're doing, and hear about, you know, life in other podcast worlds. So, absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me on the show and I really look forward to the, the other side of this is when I'm going to get to talk with Rick Moog about POGAL on on my podcast, so you'll be able to look out for that one in the future as well.
Thank you very much, Brad. Absolutely. Thanks to all of you for listening to today's conversation on the POGAL podcast. For additional details on how you can engage with the POGAL project or its working groups, contact Associate Director Marcy Dubrov at marcy.durov.org.
The POGAL project is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. If you would like to make a donation so we can keep providing podcasts, low cost workshops, and classroom materials, please visit www.pogal.org backslash donate.
Intro and outro music of our podcast is produced by POGAL practitioner, Wayne Pearson.
Please join us next time when we interview the 2022 winners of POGAL's Early Achievement Award, also known as the Peach Award. Until then, enjoy your week.