Week Five August 17-23, 2008

UTEP-UMCE News – Dr. Bill Robertson, Fulbright Scholar, UTEP Assistant Professor

Week Five August 17-23, 2008

The following is a summary of the activities that I have been engaged in during the week of August 17-23 as they relate to the work I am doing here at UMCE as part of my Fulbright Scholarship.

US Embassy Radio Interview

This week the US Embassy Radio Interview that I did along with was aired on the Internet and on Chilean radio from here in Santiago. The radio show was broadcasted as an approximately thirty (30) minute taped show hosted by Veronica Clark. The interview was done in Spanish as an outreach for the citizens of Chile on education and other issues. The interview will be available throughout Chile in the coming weeks as part of a regular US Embassy program and should also be archived and accessed on the Web in the future. The interview was over topics in science education, including the physics education projects that I am working on with Claudio while here in Santiago.

You can access it as a link on the front page of the Embassy site (http://www.embajadaeeuu.cl) as a link in the Noticias section or directly at the following URL:

http://www.embajadaeeuu.cl/OpenNews/asp/pagDefault.asp?argInstanciaId=1&argNoticiaId=4062

Beginning of Classes for Spring Semester at UMCE

I am preparing to begin my interactions with students in the new classes at UMCE, which began on Monday, August 18. I will be participating directly in classes associated with the new physics project, and am preparing a list of seminar options for the faculty to look over to see where my areas of expertise might best match to their course offerings. My goal is to participate in each of the 4 modules as well as interact with the entire faculty.

I am also preparing a list of approximately 10 topics that I can use to give presentations in other professor’s classes in the physics department. This will help me to interact and network with the other professors in tangible ways as well as help me to increase my depth and breadth in my academic delivery here in Santiago. This is also part of my Fulbright project, which is a Lecture/Research award, and an important part of my actual interaction with students in classes throughout the semester. This also will have an added benefit of being useful topics for multicultural science education once I return to UTEP.

Faculty Meeting

On Wednesday, August 20, I attended what the regular weekly staff meetings with the Physics department on the new physics project they are implementing this coming semester. At this meeting, we discussed the issues of the physics units that are being developed in the areas of the workshop in scientific thinking that uses a problem-based learning approach, as well as the mathematical physics module. I have also been finalizing the translation for my evaluation instruments on efficacy (STEBI-B) in Spanish and technology use for students in Spanish. There will be a final review by the physics faculty next week and then prepared and delivered to the students as part of my Fulbright Study. I am also planning to make this available for the faculty to use in subsequent semesters, as the project will continue here in the 2009 academic year.

The faculty also uses , the online platform Moodle as a way of sharing all information related to the department and within the college. This has an added be3nefit in that materials on any of the areas being implemented can be shared with other faculty not able to make meetings or presentations. It also has the important additional benefit of not having copies of large computer being sent around via email and users only have to go to one site in order to access the most current versions of materials. While we at UTEP have the MySpace area and we use it well for things like graduate exams, I believe this is an area that we at UTEP could do better, and by seeing how the colleagues here use Moodle, I believe I will have some practical suggestions for the future to share with my colleagues.


Motivational Demonstration of Action Science at UMCE

On Thursday, August 21, I did a demonstration on the patio of the College of Education building at my host institution, la UMCE, here in Santiago as part of Prof. Claudio Perez's class in Physics education. My demo was part of the beginnings for the student teams who will use data from my skateboarding to construct mathematical models and computer simulations. There was a lot of interest in the class as well as a large crowd that gathered that included both faculty and other students on the campus. The idea was to engage the students in a constructivist activity that would motivate them to work within the teams to develop an active hypothesis that they can use to construct a computer model to simulate some of my movements. We will be performing measurements next week with both traditional materials such as tape measurers and stopwatches as well with Pasco sensors to get data from the movement in order to construct date driven computer models.

Organization of Spring Semester Classes by Day and Section

The organization of the day at the university (la UMCE) is set around 90 minute blocks of time, with the first block (I) beginning at 8 AM and the last block (VII) ending at 10 PM or 20:00 hours (horas). The 90-minute block periods have a regimented 15-minute break between the blocks, and classes in science education typically covering 2 of these blocks. The students in the physics program are assigned to either an “A” or a “B” section, as there are in effect 2 sections of each class being taught. The students and the professors usually take a break in the mid-morning to have a coffee (un café) or some juice (unos jugos), and there is usually an extended lunch (un almuerzo) beginning at 1 PM (13:00 horas) which is a longer break of around 90 minutes and is usually the biggest meal of the day. Later in the day, there is another late afternoon break with more relaxed conversation and coffee or tea and then a final push until people head out for the day.

UMCE facts

You can also see some interesting News from UMCE regularly on the Noticias area of their Web site (http://www.umce.cl/investigacion/noticias.html) as well as additional information on the physics department (http://www.umce.cl/~fisica/principal.html).


Personal Transition to Work in Spanish

In the past week of my academic work here, I had new challenges but in many ways it also began to feel a lot like the work I do back in El Paso. I am beginning to see that my methods as an instructor utilizing constructivist approaches are solid, and that my efforts as a researcher will be useful and valuable. With increased interactions with students in real classes, I feel that I am expanding on my skills as an instructor in Spanish, and this will surely help me when I return to UTEP.