Introductory Courses
To fulfill MIT’s General Institute Requirements (GIRs), all undergraduates must receive credit for Mechanics (8.01) and Electricity and Magnetism (8.02). A portion of students receive credit for 8.01 by receiving a 5 on both Physics C exams. Another portion receive credit by passing Advanced Standing Exams (ASEs) which are generally written by a member of our group. Students are recommended to a particular version of 8.01 based on their scores on the Math Skills Assessment (formerly Math Diagnostic for Physics Placement) which our group is partially responsible for.
Information for students is available at https://physics.mit.edu/academic-programs/undergrads/
The introductory courses we support are:
- 8.01 (Mechanics, Fall Only) and 8.02 (E&M)
- taken by most students; taught in the TEAL format
- Our group comprises the course co-administrator (who selects/writes class content and exams and manages logistical questions), a number of lecturers (who lead sections providing pacing and context), technical instructors (who run demos and labs and support students on group problems), and a technical team (who implement/record/publish content and administer specific course logistics such as TA assignments, grading, extension-handling, analytics, etc.)
- Our group actively creates MITx content which is deployed and tested in residential and MITx Online versions of the course
- 8.012 (Mechanics, Fall Only) and 8.022 (E&M)
- More mathematically rigorous; taught in lecture format
- Our group provides technical instructors who set up lecture demonstrations and provide instructions to lecturers as well as helping select and run laboratory experiments.
- 8.01L (Mechanics, Fall into IAP)
- Longer introduction with more time to develop calculus-based problem-solving skills; taught in the TEAL format
- Our group generally provides a recitation instructor (who provides problem-solving support and quizzes) and technical instructors (who run demos and support students on group problems and projects)
- 8.011 (Mechanics, Spring Only) and 8.021 (E&M, Fall Only)
- For students who have previously attempted the regular course; taught in small lectures with weekly quizzes
- Our group generally provides a course instructor
- 8.03 (Waves and Vibrations)
- An elective course required for physics majors; taught in an interactive lecture format
- Our group provides technical instructors who set up and sometimes run lecture demonstrations and provide instructions to lecturers.
- Occasionally, our group provides a recitation instructor
- ES.801/8012/802/8022, CC.801/8012/802/8022
- Alternative versions of our introductory courses taught in first-year learning communities (Experimental Study Group and Concourse) whose instructors we regularly communicate with and invite to our group meetings
- 8.01 Interphase EDGE/x (Summer Program)
- A program organized by MIT’s Office of Minority Education for a cohort of incoming students; an introduction to 8.01 content
- Our group generally provides a lecturer
- Our group has also created MITx content which is deployed in residential and MITx Online versions of the course
Technology-Enabled Active Learning (TEAL/Studio) Format
Our large-enrollment courses (8.01, 8.02) are taught in the TEAL format which emphasizes the following features:
Active Learning
Students are engaged in a “studio” format with concept questions, collaborative group problems, demos, and experiments dispersed throughout the class.
Blended Learning
Students complete Learning Sequences online prior to class. Learning Sequences contain Lightboard recordings of lecture content with worked examples interspersed with simple graded exercises. Thus class time is spent practicing problem-solving and providing formative assessment results to instructors. As Learning Sequences are completed before material is covered in class, we have a Second Chance reflection form to allow students to receive credit after using up their attempts at the problems. While content to prepare for the next class had been a component of automatically-graded problem sets on WebAssign or CyberTutor/MasteringPhysics, the current MITx lecture content allowed us to reduce the weekly in-class commitment from 5 to 4 hours.
Collaborative Learning
Students work in groups of 3 on in-class problems and experiments. Instructors (lecturer, technical instructor, and graduate TA) walk around the room to interact with student groups. Students can also seek help from upper-class students who ave been hired as undergraduate TAs and assigned to their table.
Modularity
The course is broken into 1.5-week modules consisting of learning sequences, classwork, Friday Problem Solving, problem sets, and ultimately exams. This provides spaced repetition with increasing complexity of problems. These modules also exist in a reusable MITx library.
Experimentation
One goal of TEAL was to re-introduce tabletop experiments and to ensure they are integrated into the flow of the course. Historically, the course used 17, more than one per week, whose data collection was performed on computers provided to students. The course has evolved to using around 4 experiments per term plus a few smaller collaborative explorations.
The original experiments were a mix of commercial apparatus, durable setups based on the former DIY experiment version of the course, and custom designs. Some recent designs come from collaborators in electrical engineering which we then compressed into kits during the pandemic. We have also collaborated with other departments including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences.
Visualization
MIT’s major addition to the “Studio Physics” approach was to incorporate interactive visualizations to help students make sense of the abstract fields underlying electromagnetic phenomena for which they lack intuition. This grew out of work on simulations using the Dynamic Line Integral Convolution method.
The TEAL mode of instruction was piloted in Fall 2000 followed by a deployment in a dedicated classroom in Fall 2001. 8.02 was converted to TEAL in Spring 2003 followed by 8.01 in Fall 2005. The residential MITx version of the course arrived in 2014.
During the pandemic, a mentoring program was developed in the department along with an associated pedagogy course. We also have our own training for graduate TAs. Since the pandemic, we have moved all grading including exams to Gradescope. We also use a series of scripts for moving data between MITx, Canvas, and Gradescope as well as processing extensions. Some future projects include the integration of computation thinking in the form of Jupyter Notebooks, attempts to integrate AI, and the construction of figure and problem libraries.
Inspirations for TEAL
Comprehensive Unified Physics Learning Environment (CUPLE) and “Studio Physics” at RPI
Peer Instruction at Harvard
Student‐Centered Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs (SCALE-UP) at NCSU
Small classes in the Experimental Study Group (ESG) at MIT; Microcomputer-Based Laboratory at Tufts; Workshop Physics at Dickinson; Electric and Magnetic Interactions at CMU; RealTime Physics at the University of Oregon; and Extended Analytic Physics at Rutgers.
Credits for TEAL
Funding:
The Alex and Brit d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in MIT Education, MIT/Microsoft iCampus Alliance, the Davis Educational Foundation, National Science Foundation Grants 9950380 and 0618558, the Class of 1960 Endowment for Innovation in Education, the Class of 1951 Fund for Excellence in Education, the Class of 1955 Fund for Excellence in Teaching, the Helena Foundation, MIT School of Science’s Educational Initiative Awards, and MIT Academic Computing
Credits from initial iterations:
Pedagogy: John Belcher, Peter Dourmashkin, Sen-ben Liao, David Litster, Norman Derby, Stanislaw Olbert
Assessment: Yehudit Judy Dori
Java Simulations: Andrew McKinney, Philip Bailey, Michael Danziger, Mesrob Ohannesian, Pierre Poignant, Ying Cao
3D Illustration/Animation: Mark Bessette, Michael Danziger
Shockwave Visualizations: Michael Danziger
Visualization Techniques R&D: Andreas Sundquist (DLIC), Mesrob Ohannessian (IDRAW)
Advanced Labs (8.13/8.14)
http://web.mit.edu/8.13/www/index.shtml