Teaching Philosophy
Physics is simply an awesome branch of science, and in my lab I want my students to come to that realization. With textbooks, lectures, pencils, and paper students are well equipped to learn the fundamentals of physics; however, conducting real scientific experiments is a skill that they can only learn through experience. And in my lab, students will reinforce their understanding of basic physics and are given the opportunity to learn how to conduct experiments. Science in the laboratory is very much different from working simple problems out of a textbook. For example a textbook might say that the relationship between two variables is a line, but say nothing as to how in practice the equation of the line is found. To an experienced physicist finding the equation of a line is vary straight forward, but to an inexperienced student the process can be quite daunting. In my lab, I have three primary things to teach my students: basic experimental techniques, error analysis, and experience with using Excel.
In short, I would describe my teaching style as very simple and straight forward. I prepare a ~20 minutes lecture the day before lab, and in that lecture I go over three import topics: the mathematics and theory behind what we are doing, the experimental setup and step by step procedure, and I tell them exactly what needs to be turned in. I write all of this out in a very linear fashion on the white board, and I leave it there for the duration of the lab. Then I give the remainder of the lab time to work on the experiments. I have found that the best way for them to learn this stuff is simply to let them work on the lab and play around with it so to speak. Then, I observe their progress from the front of the room where I am available to answer any questions. Every ~30 minutes I will walk around to see each group's progress and data, and redirect them if needed. In my experience, if I leave them to it they'll become resourceful in working on their own problems as opposed to becoming dependent on me.
In addition to the experimental part of the lab, I assign weekly online quizzes in Canvas. I have found that there are several very basic concepts that students have trouble with. It is not their fault for having these troubles, the problem is that they have not had enough practice with these concepts. The lectures and the lab provide them with some, however it is not enough. So I give them an online quiz of ~20 questions to give them the opportunity to practice and learn several basic concepts, such as: units, t-score analysis, functions of Excel, coordinate systems and vectors.