This year I was invited to be one of the judges of the International LUMA StarT competition. This is a large international competition organized by my colleagues at the University of Helsinki in Finland. StarT competition invites educators and students from all around the world to present and share exciting ideas about teaching and learning […]

On Saturday, March 5, 2022, UBC Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Curriculum and Pedagogy organized our second ever virtual UBC Physics Olympics. UBC Physics Olympics has a history of more than four decades! This time, we decided to have a virtual event once again, to increase student participation and decrease the risk of spreading […]

Last year we decided to conduct UBC Physics Olympics virtually. It was the choice we had to make in order to make the Olympics happen. Despite all the challenges more than 40 teams participated and the event went very well. However, surprisingly (at least to me), very few teams from outside of the Lower Mainland […]

A few days ago I was asked to lead a discussion with a group of local parents on how they can support their children during the school – university transition. As I have had an opportunity to teach undergraduate science courses for more than 10 years, I have seen many of these issues and their […]

Dear Science Educators: Today is an exciting day for many of us in British Columbia, as we are starting our new academic year.  It is especially exciting as many of us who had to teach online can return back to our campuses. While online education has its advantages, seeing students in person is also very […]

As I am preparing for my fall semester (I am teaching my physics methods course for the 10th time), I keep thinking about how this year feels and what I expect of it. While last year, it wasn’t entirely clear to us what we could do and how the term would go, this year it […]

This summer I had an opportunity to teach an intensive online course in our M.Ed. in Science Education program. My course focused on using technology in STEM education. One of the assignments in the course was to design a professional development activity that would support teachers in incorporating technologies in their practice. This is what […]

Last week, we organized our first ever virtual STEM 2021 Conference. This was very special for us for many reasons. After I had some time to rest and think about it, I have to say that I am very pleased with how our conference went. We had a lot of interesting presentations, keynotes, workshops and […]

For the last two+ years, my colleagues and I have been working hard to organize an international STEM in Education Conference. It is the second time we are organizing it and Prof. David Anderson and I are co-chairs this time around. When we started our preparation in 2018, we had no idea that the conference […]

Today Valery  and I had an opportunity to present together at the International LUMAT Research Symposium in Helsinki Finland.  It was a very special presentation for me for many reasons. First of all, I am very excited about using smartphones to do science. I think this is something positive that came out of this year […]