Letter to Deans about Rod's Conceptual Physics course.

Rod was approached by Department Chair Joe Hadley in 1980 with a request from the School of Education to develop a physics overview course for their students, particularly the graduate students in science education. Rod developed a six-week intensive course titled Conceptual Physics, following the pattern set by Paul Hewitt, with whom he had had discussions at Physics Teachers meetings over several years. By 1982 the course was well established and we produced a description of courses recommended for students in the College of Education.

The Conceptual Physics course quickly became our most popular offering to students in the College of Education partly because of new requirements of physics content for certifications for science teachers in Georgia. But it was also popular because of its conceptual approach with experiments and demonstrations emphasized. This was a good opprtunity for Rod because it was the time of the dawning of computers with graphical interfaces so that he could develop illustrations for classroom computers. In about 1990, he was able to get a grant to set up a computer-equipped laboratory/classroom in the new science building a Georgia State. This developed rapidly with projection of the computer screen in the classroom and further development of graphic-intensive instructional material.

Rod became more and more involved with the College of Education and served on the PhD committees of several graduate students in science education, one of whom was studying the use of concept maps in science instruction. Rod gained a great deal from this because concept maps became the organizing principle for HyperPhysics, which he began developing in the early 1990s. The new computer aided classroom/laboratory and the growing use of computer illustration and even computer tools for some of the laboratories contributed to the growing popularity of the Conceptual Physics course. This is some of the background which led to the following letter of commendation about the contributions of the Physics and Astronomy Department's contributions to the School of Education.