David R. Sokoloff
Department of Physics
1371 E 13th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97403-1274
541-221-6543
sokoloff@uoregon.edu
David R. Sokoloff was awarded the 2020 American Association of Physics
Teachers Hans
Christian Oersted Medal for his "outstanding, widespread, and
lasting impact on the teaching of physics." 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 curriculaѷhich were developed with longtime colleagues Ronald
Thornton and Priscilla Lawsѩnclude 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 (ңlickersө. 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 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.
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 Française,
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).