The Journal of College Science Teaching

Abstract

Picture your favorite restau-rant. Which aspects make it a relaxing, comfortable envi-ronment? What if you could take those aspects and apply them to a classroom? Imagine students seated at round tables, discussing physics while “waiters ” (the course instructors) bounce around among the tables, asking questions. In fact, many such classrooms are now in operation across the country, and stud-ies are showing major benefits over traditional lecture settings. Over the years, quite a few pedagogical advances have been demonstrated to work effectively (see Figure 1). The common factor in most of them is interaction. However, economics at large universities simply require that classes have large enroll-ment to be sustainable. The SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment for Undergraduate Programs) project was developed to implement reforms designed for small classes into large physics classes. Notwithstanding its specific ini-tial motivation, the SCALE-UP learn-ing environment is general in terms of both class size and discipline. Over 50 schools across the country, ranging

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