Each year, ASSETT awards the Excellence in Teaching with Technology Award to a faculty member who was nominated by their peers and students for their commitment to teaching with technology. In 2023, Bethany Wilcox was recognized for her use of technology to help students engage with course materials in meaningful ways that further their abilities to visualize the complexities of physics while simultaneously building their confidence as learners and leaders in the classroom.
Bethany is an assistant professor in the Physics department and a member of the Physics Education Research Group. Her responsibilities include researching, serving on university committees, and, most notably, teaching CU's aspiring scientists in Physics, Astronomy, and Engineering. Along with her teaching, she also conducts research mainly focused on studying Physics Education Research, which delves into understanding students' abilities to problem solve in advanced Physics courses, measuring students' learning to ensure that curriculum and course development decisions are determined and grounded in data.
In Bethany’s nomination letter, her nominee mentioned that she is a pioneer at CU for integrating technology in the classroom through her use of a Microsoft tablet that allows her to seamlessly transition between slides, i-clicker software, and other simulations that display complex concepts within Physics. While tablets are common within higher education, Bethany optimizes her use of this device by writing on and annotating slides in real-time during lectures. Through meticulous planning (and hours of pre-lecture prep), she drafts the details of every slide. She uses different colored pens over a black background to explain concepts. And, because she’s sketched out every slide, Bethany can strategically place images on her screen that support her content without interfering with her text. This teaching method enables her to integrate technologies into her lectures that engage students' connections with the course on a much deeper level. Bethany also uses this technique to teach some of the most complex topics in Physics so students not only perform well in her course, but also internalize these concepts - like Quantum Mechanics:
“Quantum Mechanics can be very abstract because it is about the very small world. You cannot see electrons and quantities like spin, which are difficult to visualize because they don't have any classical analogs.”
Quantum Mechanics is a difficult concept. For some students, this hampers their ability to connect with the course material and instills anxiety. Bethany recognizes this sentiment and incorporates simulations, or sims, in her lectures to help students engage with these abstract concepts. During class, students experiment with these sims to understand these difficult and abstract concepts. Bethany often assigns a homework assignment where she has them use these sims to complete question sets. Bethany believes that her use of technology in and out of the classroom helps ground Physics so that students can truly grasp broader terms that are often hard or even impossible to visualize. By creating these exploratory processes, students engage with difficult concepts, further enhance their ability to understand the course material, and discover new aspects of Physics and themselves as learners.
One of the most vital parts of Bethany's research and her integration of technology in the classroom is its ability to instill confidence in students. Bethany creates courses emphasizing "exploration and learning" through tutorials that help create building blocks for students' foundational understanding of Physics. These tutorials are inclusively designed to support and engage the learner with material that enhances and harnesses their understanding of core concepts. Bethany believes this pedagogical approach greatly assists in her students’ ability to engage with and learn more advanced concepts in the future.
Bethany clearly emphasizes that her teaching techniques and use of technology disregard normative teaching structures focused on correctness and speed. Instead her teaching approach encourages students to explore the Physics world, allowing students to build their confidence. All of Bethany’s course lectures and content are available for students to review what they’ve learned from previous class sessions. Bethany believes that providing previous class content aids in her students' abilities to "come to class feeling engaged and relaxed," without worrying about the previous week's concepts.
When asked about what advice she had for others, Bethany pragmatically responded, "Practice and have a plan. Don't try to wing it with technology because Murphy's law applies. Have a plan for what you will do if the technology fails so that you can smoothly transition when things inevitably go wrong. And, above all, check in with the students to ensure everything is going well, and be prepared to change your approach if they have concerns or suggestions."
Bethany shows us that Physics is not only about speed and correctness but also how we can use education and technology to explore, build confidence, and learn what makes us passionate. She is an exemplary educator whose work further enlightens us about how, as learners, we constantly find new ways to shape how we learn and engage with the world around us. We can not be more excited to congratulate Behtnay Wilcox on all of her achievements, and we look forward to continuing to watch her help shape the future of education.
