Teaching Electricity and Magnetism with PhET Simulations

PhET Interactive Simulations (https://phet.colorado.edu/), a project of the University of Colorado Boulder, provides fun, free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations for use across, primary, secondary, and higher education levels. We extensively test and evaluate each simulation to ensure educational effectiveness. All simulations are open source and free to all students and teachers. In this course, you will acquire teaching and facilitation strategies for how to use PhET simulations for teaching introductory, conceptual electricity and magnetism topics. Specifically, you will interact with 16 PhET simulations, engage as a learner with model lessons, and reflect as a teacher on PhET’s instructional strategies in the context of introductory electricity and magnetism. To finish this course, you need to complete one assignment with peer review: design your own sim-based plans (such as a unit plan) for teaching electricity and/or magnetism, making use of five or more PhET simulations and instructional strategies.