Physics is a way of seeing the universe. How can physics teachers encourage students to experience physics in that way, instead of as a series of unrelated experiments and lectures? Many teachers believe that the answer is a method called Modeling. ComPADRE , the NSDL pathway for physics, has started a wiki that gives this community a better way to move forward.

The modeling method of instruction encourages students to construct and use scientific models to describe, explain, predict and control physical phenomena. Malcolm Wells, a professor at Arizona State University, began teaching the method in the early 1990s. It begins by giving students a small set of basic models that forms a “content core.” The instruction expands by fitting the models into scientific theories and validating them by comparing them to empirical data. The idea is to make models the core of the student’s scientific knowledge.

Between 1500 and 1800 high school teachers in the U.S. now use the modeling method. Most modelers teach physics, but the method has also been applied to chemistry and biology. Teachers point to research that shows high school students scoring much higher on a standard instrument for assessing conceptual understanding of physics if they receive expert modeling instruction. They say students are more engaged when they are taught with this method, and more likely to continue in science after finishing the course. They are more likely to “get it.”

“Modelers have a strong community, and one of our goals is to serve the communities in physics and astronomy,” says Bruce Mason, principal investigator (PI) of the ComPADRE project. About a year ago, Mason began talking to modelers about improving the ways they share teaching tools. NSDL’s Modeling Instruction Wiki for Physics is now being developed in workshops, and the next is being held at the second annual conference of the American Modeling Teachers Association (AMTA) in Tempe, Arizona from July 24-27. Lyle Barbato, who is on the wiki development team, says one goal is to allow wiki pages to be added as resources in the ComPADRE Digital Library. Another is teaching users how to add metadata to the wiki pages so they can be easily compared, ordered, and sorted. Barbato hopes the wiki will be ready for public use in the spring of 2008.

“The method encourages teachers to do things their own way and modify things to fit their individual styles,” says Mason. “And the community has a strong belief in open collaboration, so they would rather share and discuss things than buy a textbook. It all comes from the idea that students should learn and develop their own knowledge instead of hearing it from a teacher.”