Instructor Interviews
In the following videos, Professors Janet Conrad and Gunther Roland describe various aspects of how they teach “Junior Lab.” Dr. Sean Robinson shares his insights about facilitating the lab experiences associated with the courses, while Atissa Banuazizi discusses her role in developing students’ science communication proficiencies.
Professor Janet Conrad
- Meet Professor Janet Conrad
- How Students Develop as Physicists Over the Course of the Semester
- Creating a Supportive Learning Environment
- Teaching as Coaching
- Assessing Learning through Student Talks
- On Grading Student Papers
- Faster than the Speed of Light: A Future Junior Lab Experiment
- Improving Early Physics Education
Professor Gunther Roland
- Meet Professor Gunther Roland
- Tips for Educators
- Unique Aspects of the Course
- Pedagogical Iteration
- Developing Students’ Science Communication Skills
- The Role of Teamwork in Junior Lab
- Flipping the Classroom
- An Invitation to New Students
Dr. Sean Robinson
- Meet Dr. Sean Robinson
- Student Challenge #1: Unlearning How to do Experiments
- Student Challenge #2: Encountering A Multidimensional Learning Surface
- Student Challenge #3: Learning Data Analysis
- Helping Students Cultivate Identities as Scientists
- Providing Science Communication Practice
- Eliciting Cognitive Dissonance
- Flipping the Classroom
- An Active Learning Example
- Developing New Experiments: Behind-the-Scenes
Atissa Banuazizi
- Meet Atissa Banuazizi
- The Role of Iteration in Developing Oral Communication Skills
- Supporting Students with Individual Conferences
- Using the Concept of Metadiscourse to Improve Students’ Oral Presentations
- Positioning Communication Instructors as Coaches, Not Graders
- Tips for Partnering with Technical Faculty
- Building Up to an Audience
- Science is Communication
Below, Dr. Sean Robinson discusses the course re-design that shifted how instructors and students experience Junior Lab.
Re-Designing Junior Lab
Teaching Assistant Interview
Below, Aditya Pathak responds to questions about being a graduate teaching assistant in 8.13 Experimental Physics I.
OCW: Teaching assistantships vary from class to class. Please describe your role as a graduate teaching assistant in 8.13 Experimental Physics I.
Aditya Pathak: My role as a teaching assistant was to help students carry out experiments, which included helping them understand the experiments and debug common errors. I also graded their presentations and paper reports, along with the instructor, and graded other pre-lab homework problems.
OCW: What challenges did students face in the course?
Aditya Pathak: Students often went straight into the experiments without fully understanding the theory they were testing. Because Junior Lab emphasizes the quality of students’ analyses, they needed a lot of guidance.
Junior Lab also requires that students maintain harmonious and fair relationships with their lab partners. While most students got along well in my sections, it’s not always a given.
OCW: In what ways did supporting students advance your own work as a physicist?
Aditya Pathak: Junior Lab is a world class teaching lab. Even as a teaching assistant, you can learn skills important for your research. For example, after observing students’ presentations and seeing the value of precision and estimating sources of errors, I learned to bring the same tone to my own science communication. I was able to significantly increase the quality of my research projects by going after every little source of confusion in my work, like the students did with their apparatuses.
I was also very fortunate to have some really driven students in my class. One student’s lab partner left the class during the first half of the semester. I volunteered to help her by filling the role of a partner. While working with her on one of the experiments, I got very curious myself, and ended up writing a detailed simulation with graphic visualization for the experiment! We tested the simulation extensively with the experimental data. After making serval updates to the code I had written, we were able to get excellent agreement between the simulation and the data. This was exciting, because it was unprecedented.
I also supported another student in making similar simulations. This student was so curious and dedicated that I decided to continue working with him even after Junior Lab. Since he was working in the same field of particle physics and found my research at the Center for Theoretical Physics exciting, I realized we would make a great team. I asked my advisor to let him work with us on one of our research projects, and since then, he’s been working with me through the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.
We have come a long way since he joined and we plan to finish this project with a publication, on which this student will be a co-author. In fact, it’s now his thesis topic!
OCW: What teaching strategies did you learn in 8.13 that you will take with you when you become a lead instructor in a similar course?
Aditya Pathak: Giving regular presentations and writing many papers helped students develop communication skills. Students in Junior Lab also learn to collaborate with partners, a skill that will serve them well in their professional settings. The open-ended nature of the problems encouraged them to go beyond the lab guides to search the literature and complete extensive analyses. I found these instructional approaches quite exciting and I hope to integrate them into my teaching one day.
OCW: What advice do you have for other teaching assistants who will support students in future iterations of the course?
Aditya Pathak: I’d tell teaching assistants to stop listening to their colleagues who feel that teaching Junior Lab involves too large a time commitment, and instead realize that, in this class, there’s an amazing opportunity to be creative. In our doctoral studies, we work on complex problems, which may take years to finish. In Junior Lab, one gets to feel the same level of creativity and excitement when working with students on problems solved over the course of a few weeks—it generates a unique “big picture” satisfaction.
There are students in Junior Lab so talented that every second spent attending their presentations is worth it. And, you never know, you might find great students to help you with your research projects like I did!
Student Interviews
In the following videos, five MIT students offer advice for future students taking Junior Lab and tips for educators facilitating similar experiences.
Saarik Kalia & Efetobore (Toby) Tasker
Tal Scully
- Junior Lab Offers A Wide Range of Experiments
- Advice for Students: Be Persistent
- Advice for Women in Physics: Be Confident
Christina Wang
- Take this Course, Even if you Want to be a Theoretical Physicist
- Time Management Tip: Don’t Procrastinate!
Henry Shackleton
- Advice about Teamwork: Take Time to Verify Your Partner’s Work
- On the Flipped Classroom Format
- A Space to Figure Things Out
- Tips for Educators
Below, Talia Weiss responds to questions about her experiences as a junior physics major enrolled in 8.13 Experimental Physics I.
OCW: What did you learn about science communication by taking 8.13 Experimental Physics I?
Talia Weiss: Going into the course, I hoped it would expand my previous experience presenting physics research. 8.13 Experimental Physics I met and exceeded those expectations. It provided us with ample practice developing quality talks in a limited timeframe, crafting PowerPoint slides to most effectively and engagingly convey key points about an experiment, and ensuring that our content and presentation style was accessible and clear.
OCW: What factors contributed to your success in 8.13? Were there any teaching strategies your instructors used that particularly supported your learning?
Talia Weiss: The introductory period of the class, in which we learned relevant skills, conducted small experiments, presented an ungraded talk and wrote an ungraded paper, was particularly useful in preparing us to dive into more complex experiments and analyses. During this time period, the professor clearly established meaningful standards for quality of plot making and paper writing. Throughout the semester, instructors were consistently available to respond to questions. Dr. Robinson was always very gracious and willing to discuss lab procedures, experimental challenges (as they arose), and data analysis. In addition, I appreciated having the opportunity to improve presentation slides with the help of a writing instructor.
OCW: What advice do you have for other students about engaging with and getting the most out 8.13 Experimental Physics I?
Talia Weiss: I would advise future 8.13 students as follows: use the first month of the class to proactively develop effective collaboration and organizational strategies with your partner, in terms of preparing for lab sessions, scheduling your time, and establishing systems of data-taking, recording, and analysis.
The 8.13 instructors advised us to analyze data immediately after we collected them (the same day or soon afterwards), as well as to practice talks out loud multiple times before presenting them. I would recommend that future students view these strategies as de facto requirements, as opposed to suggestions, as they can make a great deal of difference. I also found it helpful to write down “reflections” (thoughts or observations that I may not have had time to record during lab) within a few hours of each lab session.
OCW: What advice do you have for young women interested in pursuing physics at the university level?
Talia Weiss: I’d like to pass on three pieces of advice adapted from guidance given by MIT Professor of Physics Jesse Thaler (who intended this advice for all students, but I think it could be particularly valuable for young women in physics):
- Make yourself seen—go to talks, show up to class, be active and participate.
- Find mentors who are concerned about your success and well-being.
- Learn to tell a compelling story, regardless of the subject area.
Physical Review Letters Editor Interview
Students in Junior Lab write papers in the style of Physical Review Letters to hone their science communication skills. Below, Dr. Robert Garisto, an editor of this premier journal, responds to questions about helping students and young professionals develop professional competencies as writers in the field.
OCW: Please describe your role at Physical Review Letters (PRL).
Dr. Robert Garisto: The primary responsibility of a PRL editor is to decide, via a peer review process, which manuscripts submitted to PRL will be accepted for publication. I have a number of other roles, including deciding which papers we will highlight with a PRL Editors’ Suggestion, managing several junior editors, and helping chart the course for the future of the journal.
OCW: What challenges do you see newly-minted physicists encountering in the realm of science communication?
Dr. Robert Garisto: As young researchers move further into a specific field, they focus on ever more arcane details, and tend to talk in acronym-laden jargon. The biggest communication challenge is bridging the gap between calculations and lab notes written in that jargon and a polished piece that the larger community can understand. This is a skill—scientists are not born knowing how to communicate their results clearly. And how well results are communicated is crucial to how much they will affect future research, and how broad their reach will be. So, it is essential that physicists learn to clearly and concisely explain their results. The best time to learn to do that is before writing habits become ingrained.
OCW: In what ways does writing papers in the style of Physical Review Letters as undergraduates address some of these challenges?
Dr. Robert Garisto: Writing Letters will help students concisely and clearly explain their results to a broad readership.
OCW: What advice do you have for educators hoping to help students develop their professional competencies in the realm of written science communication?
Dr. Robert Garisto: Get students to focus on the message they want conveyed. What is the take-home story? I would suggest getting them to explain the same result in a title, in an abstract for colleagues, and in a popular summary for the science-interested layperson. By gearing an explanation of the same thing to different audiences (the physicist casually reading the table of contents, the colleague carefully reading abstracts, and the layperson or reporter just trying to figure out from a popular summary what was done and why), the student can become adept at seeing their results through the eyes of others who have different levels of expertise and interest. If there is time to write a longer piece, the next level is a Letter.
OCW: What tips do you have for students about communicating with other scientists about their work?
Dr. Robert Garisto: Bounce your work off of a colleague who is not too close to the research. Do they get hung up in understanding it?
OCW: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Dr. Robert Garisto: Brevity is the soul of wit.
Curriculum Information
Prerequisites
- 8.04 Quantum Physics I is the prerequisite for taking 8.13 Experimental Physics I.
- 8.05 Quantum Physics II and 8.13 Experimental Physics I are the prerequisites for taking 8.14 Experimental Physics II.
Requirements Satisfied
- CI-M
(8.13) - 8.13 and 8.14 can be applied toward a Bachelor of Science in Physics.
Offered
- 8.13 is offered every fall and spring semester and 8.14 is offered every spring semester.
Student Information
Enrollment
8.13’s enrollment is typically about 40 students, while 8.14’s enrollment is typically about 15 students.
Breakdown by Year
Mostly juniors
Breakdown by Major
Mostly physics majors
8.13 Experimental Physics I
Assessment
The students’ grades were based on the following activities:
- 18% Lab attendance and performance & lab notebooks
- 12% Homework exercises & three preparatory questions
- 30% Oral examinations (3)
- 30% Four-page written summaries (3)
- 10% Final oral presentation (public)
8.14 Experimental Physics II
Assessment
The students’ grades were based on the following activities:
- 19% Lab attendance and performance & lab notebooks
- 6% Preparatory questions (3)
- 27% Oral examinations (3)
- 16% Five-page written summaries (3)
- 32% Project proposal, poster, and peer review
8.13 Experimental Physics I
How Student Time Was Spent
During an average week, students were expected to spend 18 hours on the course, roughly divided as follows:
In Class
- Met 2 times per week for 3 hours per session; 26 sessions total.
- The first few class sessions familiarized students with the lab, giving everyone a common foundation in safety, experimental techniques, data analysis, collaboration skills, oral and written communication, and computing tools.
- Next, students completed three short preliminary experiments in pairs.
- Following the introductory period, students planned, executed, and reported on three longer experiments, also in pairs.
- The term culminated in a week-long series of public oral presentations given by students in the style of a parallel session at an American Physical Society conference.
- There were optional open lab days offered toward the end of the semester.
Out of Class
- In-class work was complemented by a small number of graded homework assignments, some of which took place on the 8.13 MITx residential course site.
- Each experiment contained a set of preparatory questions which included the essentials of the experiment and safety information. Students were expected to work out the solutions to the preparatory problems in their lab notebooks and to submit answers on the 8.13 MITx residential course site before starting the experiment.
- For each main experiment, a one-hour oral examination and discussion was scheduled for each pair of lab partners. Students rehearsed for these exams outside of class. The oral exams were video-recorded so that students could review their presentation techniques.
- A written summary was prepared for each of the three standard experiments, plus one preliminary experiment. Students prepared these summaries individually outside of class. They were encouraged to work with writing consultants at the Writing and Communication Center.
- Students prepared their final oral presentations outside of class.
8.14 Experimental Physics II
How Student Time Was Spent
During an average week, students were expected to spend 18 hours on the course, roughly divided as follows:
In Class
- Met 2 times per week for 3 hours per session; 26 sessions total.
- The first class period was dedicated to selecting partners, choosing the first experiments, and brief introductory remarks by the section instructors.
- The remainder of the term was divided into four experimental sessions of 5 days each. Experiments for three of the four sessions were selected from the standard Junior Lab menu, while the fourth was an open-ended project of students’ own design.
- The open-ended project was evaluated based on a scientific poster prepared and presented in an open poster session at the send of the semester.
Out of Class
- Each experiment contained a set of preparatory questions which included the essentials of the experiment and safety information. Students were expected to work out the solutions to the preparatory problems in their lab notebooks and to submit answers on the 8.14 MITx residential course site before starting the experiment.
- For each main experiment, a one-hour oral examination and discussion was scheduled for each pair of lab partners. Students rehearsed for these exams outside of class. The oral exams were video-recorded so that students could review their presentation techniques.
- A written summary in the style of a Physical Review Letter was prepared for each of the three standard experiments. Students prepared these summaries individually outside of class. They were encouraged to work with writing consultants at the Writing and Communication Center.
- Students worked on their scientific posters and presentations outside of class.
