David R. Sokoloff
Department of Physics
1274 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1274
541-221-6543
sokoloff@uoregon.edu
David R. Sokoloff was the winner of the 2007 Robert A. Millikan award of
the American Association of Physics Teachers for notable and creative
contributions to the teaching of physics. 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 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 curriculawhich were developed with longtime colleagues Ronald
Thornton and Priscilla Lawsinclude 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 is currently
working on an NSF-funded project to develop 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 these agencies, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
and local sources.
Since 1999, he has been part of a UNESCO team presenting
active learning workshops in developing countries. Active Learning in Optics and
Photonics (ALOP) workshops have been presented in Ghana, Tunisia (2),
Morocco, India, Tanzania, Brazil, Mexico (2), Zambia, Cameroon, Colombia, Nepal
(2), Chile, Algeria, The Philippines, Rwanda, Armenia, Thailand, Ethiopia,
Georgia, Indonesia, Mauritius, South Africa, Bolivia and Panama. 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 sons 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.
Selected
Publications:
David R.
Sokoloff, Active
Learning of Introductory Light and Optics, Phys.
Teach. 54: 1, 18 (2016).
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).
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.
Active Learning in Optics and
Photonics Training Manual,
David R. Sokoloff, ed., (Paris, UNESCO, 2006). (Version Franaise,
2008.)
David
R. Sokoloff and Ronald K. Thornton, Interactive
Lecture Demonstrations (Hoboken, NJ, John Wiley and Sons, 2004)
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).
David
R. Sokoloff and Ronald K. Thornton, "Using Interactive Lecture
Demonstrations to Create an Active Learning Environment, "The Physics Teacher 35: 6, 340 (1997).