David R. Sokoloff
Department of Physics
1371 E 13th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97403-1274
541-221-6543
sokoloff@uoregon.edu
In 2020, David R. Sokoloff was awarded the American Association of Physics
Teachers (AAPT) Hans Christian Oersted
Medal for his "outstanding, widespread, and lasting impact on
the teaching of physics," (Oersted
Lecture) and the GIREP
Medal (Medal of the Groupe International de Recherche sur l’Enseignement de
la Physique). He
also received the 2007 AAPT Robert
A. Millikan award. He was elected President of the American Association of
Physics Teachers in 2008, and completed the four-year leadership cycle, serving
as President in 2011. He was awarded the 2010 Excellence
in Physics Education Award by the American Physical Society (with Priscilla
Laws, Ronald Thornton and the Activity Based Physics Group.) In 2011, he and
the Active Learning in Optics and Photonics workshop team were awarded the SPIE
Educator
Award. In 2011, he was also a Fulbright Specialist in Argentina, and
was awarded the Latin American Physics Education Network (LAPEN) Medal. He was
a Fulbright Specialist in Japan in 2018.
He is Professor of Physics, Emeritus at the University of
Oregon. He began his studies of physics at Queens College of the City
University of New York, and went on to earn his Ph.D.
in AMO physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972 under Ali
Javan. Prior to his current position, he was a faculty member at Western
Illinois University and University of Michigan, Dearborn. He has held visiting
positions at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Tufts
University, Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne, Australia, and Universidad Nacional de San Luis, San Luis, Argentina,
and spent a year as
Science Director of WISTEC, the hands-on science center in Eugene, Oregon.
His physics curriculum development work and extensive
dissemination efforts are nationally and internationally recognized. For over
two decades, he has conducted research into students' understandings of
physics, and used the results of this research to develop active learning
approaches to enhance student understanding in introductory physics courses.
These new curricula, which were developed with longtime colleagues Ronald
Thornton and Priscilla Laws, include the four modules of RealTime
Physics: Active Learning Laboratories (RTP) and
Interactive Lecture Demonstrations (ILDs), both of which are
published by John Wiley and Sons. (RTP
is now in its Third Edition.) These curricula make heavy use of computer-based
laboratory tools for data collection and analysis, were developed with support
from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education, and
are used extensively at the university, college and
high school levels. More recent curricula make research-validated use of video
analysis and of personal response systems (“clickers”). He has also
developed—with NSF funding—active learning
lab activities for distance learning using the IOLab device. He has
conducted numerous national
and local institutes and workshops to
disseminate these active learning approaches to college-level and secondary
teachers, with support from the National Science Foundation, the U.S.
Department of Education, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and local sources.
During the pandemic, he developed a set of 26 Home-Adapted
ILDs—based on the in-class versions—for use by students working virtually
at home.
Since 1999, he has been part of a UNESCO team presenting
active learning workshops in developing countries. Since 2004, 37 Active Learning in
Optics and Photonics (ALOP) workshops have been presented with over 1100
teachers from over 30 countries participating. Among the countries where ALOPs
have been held are in Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, India, Tanzania, Brazil, Mexico,
Zambia, Cameroon, Colombia, Nepal, Chile, Algeria, The Philippines, Rwanda,
Armenia, Thailand, Ethiopia, Georgia, Indonesia, Mauritius, South Africa,
Pakistan, Bolivia, Panama, Peru and Ecuador. He is the
editor of Active Learning in Optics and
Photonics, the training manual published by UNESCO for use in these
workshops. Besides selected activities from RTP
and ILDs, his contributions to this
manual include a series of optics magic tricks that he has used to teach optics
concepts at the college level, to the public, to his sonճ
fourth grade class and to first and fourth graders in Australia. He has also
presented active learning workshops on optics and other topics in physics in
Chile, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, The
Philippines, Argentina, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Slovenia, Czech Republic,
Vietnam, Korea, China, Sri Lanka and throughout the U.S.
VIEW my CV.
Selected
Publications:
David R. Sokoloff, “Active Learning of Introductory Light and Optics,” Phys. Teach. 54:
1, 18 (2016). VIEW
Erik Bodegom, Erik Jensen and David
Sokoloff, “Adapting RealTime Physics for Distance Learning with the
IOLab,” Phys.
Teach. 57: 9, 382 (2019). VIEW
David
R. Sokoloff, “Exploring Multimedia to Adapt Interactive Lecture Demonstrations
(ILDs) for Home Use,” To be published 2022 in Physics Teacher Education - What
Matters? Proceedings of the GIREP Malta Webinar, November 2020. VIEW
David R. Sokoloff, Ronald K. Thornton and Priscilla W. Laws, RealTime Physics Module 1: Mechanics, Module
2: Heat and Thermodynamics, Module 3:
Electricity and Magnetism, and Module 4: Light and Optics, 3rd
Edition (Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley and Sons, 2012). VIEW
David R. Sokoloff, Ronald K. Thornton and
Priscilla W. Laws, “RealTime Physics: Active Learning Labs Transforming the
Introductory Laboratory,” Eur. J. of
Phys., 28 (2007), S83-S94. VIEW
Active Learning in Optics and
Photonics Training Manual,
David R. Sokoloff, ed., (Paris, UNESCO, 2006; Second Printing, 2016). (Version
Française, 2008.) VIEW
David
R. Sokoloff and Ronald K. Thornton, Interactive
Lecture Demonstrations (Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley
and Sons, 2004). VIEW
Ronald
K. Thornton and David R. Sokoloff, "Assessing Student Learning of Newton's
Laws: The Force and Motion Conceptual
Evaluation and the Evaluation of Active Learning Laboratory and Lecture
Curricula," American Journal of
Physics 66, 338-352 (1998). VIEW
David
R. Sokoloff and Ronald K. Thornton, "Using Interactive Lecture
Demonstrations to Create an Active Learning Environment," Phys. Teach. 35: 6, 340 (1997). VIEW