Colin Wallace

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Life Sciences Focus

The courses I teach cover topics such as allometric scaling, biomechanics, fluids, electrocardiograms, the propagation of nerve signals, MRIs, microscopes, vision, DNA diffraction, structural color, and dosimetry.

Education Research and Pedagogy Expertise

development of active learning curricula and research-validated assessments, classical test theory, item response theory, qualitative analyses of interviews of students

Describe the courses that you teach for life sciences students

The IPLS two-semester course sequence at UNC-CH is taught in the integrated Lecture/Studio format where students attend two 50-minute lectures and two 110-minute studios per week. Lectures and studios are interleaved such that students attend a large lecture section and associated smaller studio section twice per week. We refer to each lecture and its associated studio as a module. The courses are “department owned” in that they are not tied to a specific faculty member and cannot be changed without consensus

What is your approach to teaching physics for life science students?

We created a suite of 54 modules, each consisting of studio activities (Physics Activities for Life Sciences), an interactive lecture, and assessment questions, all of which have been developed using the findings and best practices from PER. This suite includes materials for many topics that are important for life science majors, but are not part of the traditional introductory physics curriculum, including stress and strain, diffusion, chemical energy, and life at low Reynolds numbers.