Richard McCray

Professor Emeritus

Astrophysics

Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences

University of Colorado

JILA
Boulder, CO 80309-0440

Phone:

303-492-7835

FAX:

303-492-5235

http://jilawww.colorado.edu/~dick

What are, to you, the key issues in creating learning resources that support your teaching style and your student's learning styles?

How to embed a robust methodology for measuring student learning and motivation within on-line learning resources -- and to incorporate this into a protocol for development and redesign.

Principles for finding optimal integration of textbook, information technology, lecture, hands-on activities, and student interaction for learning. This mix will of course depend on the particular course.

What is your vision for the "textbook" of the future and what impediments do you see to realizing that vision?

It will be a mixture of traditional text with on-line learning resources. The latter will grow in importance, and the former will (should) slim down. There is a natural tension between publisher's need to make a profit through providing proprietary resources and the value to students and instructors of using non-proprietary (open-source) on-line resources. We need an incentive structure so that publishers and providers of open sources learning resources work together constructively to make the best resources conveniently available to instructors.

Describe briefly any research you have undertaken on teaching or learning.

I have developed and tested a completely redesigned introductory astronomy course in which we replaced lectures in part by "learning teams" in which small groups of students submit work on-line before attending the "lecture" class. It's a variant of "just-in-time teaching". We make extensive use of on-line resources, including an on-line textbook that I wrote.

Have you created publicly accessible learning resources?

http://cosmos.colorado.edu/stem/courses/common/documents/hypertext.html
"Stars and Galaxies" -- an on-line textbook

http://stem.colorado.edu/applets/
a set of applets for student exploration of physical phenomena, including one complete on-line learning module

How would you like to contribute to the workshop?

I would like the opportunity to show people some of the features of my on-line textbook and an on-line learning module. I would like to share my experiences in using these facilities.

What would you like to take away from the workshop?

I am especially interested in understanding more deeply how publishers and instructors are thinking about the textbook of the future, the incentives they have, and the opportunities for a more productive interaction.