Next GEN Physical Science and Everyday Thinking

Planning Your Lecture-Style Course

The full set of Next Gen PET materials consists of ten units, organized into five modules, along with a set of optional teaching and learning materials and optional planning and conducting investigations materials. The materials are published as separate units by Activate Learning, and you can order any number and sequence of units you wish, depending on the duration of your course and how you want to organize it.

For a one-semester (15 week) or quarter (10 week), with 36-40 hours of instructional time, you can plan to fully cover four or five units. In choosing which units to use from the five modules, keep the following information in mind:

• For the Developing Models for Magnetism and Static Electricity Module, either Unit M or Unit SE can be implemented by itself, independent of the other unit.
• For the Interactions and Energy Module, Unit EM can be implemented by itself, but it is a pre-requisite for Unit PEF.
• For the Interactions and Forces Module, Unit FM is a pre-requisite for Unit CF. Both units are usually implemented together.
• For the Waves, Sound and Light Module, either Unit WS or Unit L can be implemented by itself, independent of the other unit.
• For the Matter and Interactions Module, Unit PC can be implemented by itself, but it is a pre-requisite for Unit CR. Also, these two units are longer than the other units in the curriculum, so if you are teaching a physical science course you can include two or maybe three other units in addition to these two.

Following are examples of various ways you can organize your course around a set of units. These represent actual implementations by faculty who have taught either semester-long, lecture-style, physics or physical science (physics and chemistry) courses. These courses tend to meet for seventy-five minutes twice a week. We also provide an example of a hybrid implementation, where the class meets for large-enrollment lectures and a small-enrollment lab each week.

There are also links to the daily schedule of activities for some of these implementations. You can use these for guidance in planning your own course.

• M = Magnetism; SE = Static Electricity
• EM = Energy Model of Interactions; PEF = Potential Energy and Fields
• FM = Force Model of Interactions; CF = Combinations of Forces
• WS = Waves and Sound; L = Light and Color
• PC = Physical Changes; CR = Chemical Reactions

Semester-length implementation for a physics course:

• SE, EM, PEF, FM, CF (Schedule)
• M, SE, EM, FM (part), CF (part), WS (part), L (Schedule)
• M, EM, FM, CF, WS, L (Schedule)
• M, EM, FM, CF, L (Schedule)
• EM, PEF, FM, CF (Schedule)

Semester-length implementation for a physical science course:

• EM, FM CF, PC, CR

Hybrid implementation: Semester-length physics course that includes both two 75-min lectures and one 110-min lab per week. The instructor orders both lecture-style and studio-style units from the publisher.

Sample Schedule

See Hybrid Implementation for more about this kind of implementation.

• In lecture part, all lecture-style units: M, EM, FM, CF, WS
• In laboratory part, all studio-style units: SE, L

You may also wish to include some commentary in your course syllabus or as a stand-alone document about the Next Gen PET course and its pedagogy. Here is some text you can edit.