FAQs

MBL tools are an innovative use of new educational technology that enables students to learn physical concepts in the science laboratory and classroom. Learner-controlled explorations in the science laboratory are aided by easy-to-use real-time measureme nt tools. Student learning is aided by immediate feedback since the MBL tools produce graphs as the measurements are being made. Using such Microcomputer-Based Laboratory (MBL) sensors and software students can simultaneously measure and graph such phys ical quantities as position, velocity, acceleration, force, temperature, light intensity, pH, pressure, sound pressure, radiation, current and voltage.

• MBL tools and curricula are being used by students from middle-school through the university.
• The Center's curricular materials, hardware, and software are designed to serve the diversity of students who take science courses including girls and women, under-prepared students, minorities, and those who do not intend to become scientists as well as science majors and engineers. The materials are distributed nationally through Vernier Software, Portland, OR.
• The Center is particularly concerned with the education of future teachers of elementary, middle, and high school and has developed successful curricula for such teachers at the undergraduate and graduate level.
• The Center provides national and international workshops for practicing school teachers and university professors that lead them to adopt more successful teaching methods and to better understand the subject matter. Teachers from more than forty coun tries have participated.

As part of the Tools for Scientific Thinking, Student-Oriented Science, Workshop Physics, Real-Time Physics and Modeling Workstation Programs, five very different working collaborations have been established to provide a mechanism for evaluating materials over very different student populations and to provide a means for wide dissemination.

1. The Center collaborates closely with Professors David Sokoloff of the University of Oregon and Priscilla Laws of Dickinson College (originator of Workshop Physics) to develop and evaluate materials. A national collaboration of diverse colleges and universities has also been established to evaluate materials and incorporate new teaching methods into introductory physics courses. Substantial contributions to development have been made by the following universities and colleges: Arizona State, Cal Poly, Cornell, Dickinson, MIT, Muskingum, Ohio State, Oregon, Rutgers, Texas at Austin, Tufts, and Xavier.
2. As part of a national collaboration, twenty-three exemplary high school physics teachers from twenty states (including Presidential & AAPT award winners) have spent weeks at the Center and have collaborated for over five years. A new national pro gram will bring over 200 physics teachers to three national sites and work with them over a number of years.
3. A collaboration of middle and high school science teachers in Eastern Massachusetts from urban as well as rural-suburban schools has been working closely with the Center for six years doing co-curriculum development and introducing MBL into their high school and middle school science classes. The results have been impressive.
4. The Center is collaborating with the Universities of Pavia, Naples, and Rome to introduce new teaching methods and MBL into Italian Universities and schools and to evaluate student learning. Our materials are used in many other countries. The Center organized a NATO Advanced Study Workshop on conceptual learning and technology in Italy that was attended by experts from eleven countries.
5. The Center has organized a diverse mix of institutions that educate teachers including Boise State University, University of Georgia, Hampton University, Indiana University, and Tufts University to revise the way we teach science teachers.

The final measure of our success will always be student learning. The Center runs a substantial research and evaluation program that investigates and evaluates student learning of science concepts in traditional and MBL settings. The results of student learning in many different educational contexts are available in papers published by the Center. Data from thousands of students, including underprepared and minority students, show substantial and persistent learning of basic physical concepts, not ofte n learned in lectures, by students who use MBL tools with carefully designed curricular materials. Materials produced by the Center have won national awards such as the 1990 ENCRIPTL/EDUCOM award, the best educational software award from Computers in Phy sics and from Media Magazine (1992), 1993 Program of Excellence Award for Successful Practices in Math and Science Education (US. DOE). The director of the Center won the 1992 Smithsonian/Infoworld Education Leadership Award and the 1993 Dana Foundation Award for Pioneering Achievement in Education (with Priscilla Laws).

The Center operates on a budget of approximately $600,000 per year. Most funding has been provided by national agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Education(DOE) and DOE programs including the prestigious Fund for the I mprovement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), FIRST, the Secretary's Development Fund, with additional funding from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Apple Computer, and NYNEX. The Center is currently looking for additional long term funding to contin ue this innovative work.

• Science education in the United States is in need of revitalization. Substantial student learning data show these materials, based on research in science learning, provide an effective, exciting means of teaching fundamental physical concepts to all students including traditionally underserved populations such as girls and women, under-prepared students, and minorities.
• Scientists rarely "preach what they practice." Science is exciting to scientists because they are engaged in discovery and in creatively building and testing models to explain the world around them (the practice). In most courses, students "do" no science and only hear lectures about already validated theories (the preaching). Not only do they not have an opportunity to form their own ideas, they rarely get a chance to work in any substantial way at applying the ideas of others t o the world around them. These MBL materials provide the means for students to ask and answer the questions that interest them.
• The Center has a proven track record and is in a unique position to continue the development of award-winning learning materials which will improve science education in schools and universities. The work of the Center is internationally known. Years of effort have resulted in collaborative relationships that allow genuine evaluation and the research into student learning necessary for the development of effective pedagogical materials. Substantial funding for projects under extremely competitive go vernment programs has laid the ground work for continuing cost-effective development of student-oriented science materials by the Center.