Warren J. Code

Below, a list of articles and books that I've found useful (along with a few comments to that effect), with links to those available online for free. If your favourite item is not listed, please email me a suggestion; I have not read everything that is out there!

How people learn: brain, mind, experience, and school. Bransford, Brown and Cocking, editors. National Research Council (USA), published by National Academies Press (2000). Free web edition: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070368. This is a great resource that summarizes the recent findings about learning, with a discussion of implications for the classroom.

Miller, M. D. (2011). What College Teachers Should Know About Memory: A Perspective From Cognitive Psychology. College Teaching, 59(3), 117-122. doi:10.1080/87567555.2011.580636
A primer on what is currently known about memory, with a focus on application to college teaching and learning.

The Instructor Guidance part of the Resources page for the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative has a selection of "two-pagers", which distill a number of references into practical guides on a variety of relevant topics.

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. May be previewed at Google Books. Currently the subject of a reading club at UBC Math with posted summaries from the meetings. Non-technical, easy read.

Making the connection: research and teaching in undergraduate mathematics education. Marilyn P. Carlson and Chris Rasmussen, editors. Washington DC: Mathematical Association of America (MAA) 2008. ISBN 9780883851838, available at the MAA store and can be previewed at Google Books. The articles within are summary articles by authors of their work (with references, of course). An excellent sampler of the state-of-the-art in undergraduate math ed research.

Launchings, a monthly column by David Bressoud for the MAA that focuses primarily on issues in undergraduate mathematics education. The May-August 2011 quartet of columns discuss a major survey of Caclculus instructors and students currently underway in the US.

The Calculus Concept Inventory (CCI)
The product of an NSF project headed by Jerome Epstein, the CCI seeks to measure conceptual learning of differential calculus concepts, avoiding calculation. This is in the tradition of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) in Physics (see Hake's work linked above for much more about the FCI).
Development of the CCI, written by J. Epstein.
Presentation by S. Peterson from OSU about existing data (2011).
Contact info for the CCI, hosted at the Field-tested Learning Assessment Guide website.

Deslauriers, L., Schelew, E., & Wieman, C. (2011). Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class. Science, 332(6031), 862 -864. doi:10.1126/science.1201783
No free version available, but this was mentioned quite a bit in the media in Summer, 2011. Compares learning during a week-long use of research-based instruction versus a fairly traditional lecture style, with dramatic results.

R.R. Hake (1998). Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. Am. J. Phys. 66, 64-74. This oft-cited article and more may be read at Hake's website.

Research results from the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at UBC (CWSEI), which I have been a part of since January, 2010.

Papers and talks from the Physics Education Research group at U. Colorado (PER@C); lots of interesting results here and many are more general than just Physics Education.