Faculty Teaching Fellowships

Dr. Lee has proposed a project called Linguistic Landscape Project in Korean as a Foreign Language Class: Focusing on mobility and language learning experiences. The purpose of this project is to explore the place-based geolocative resources in the Korean as a foreign language classroom. Focusing on technologies used for learning and teaching languages, this project explores the linguistic environment, particularly, the usage of Korean in the urban areas of Georgia by using different technologies. Students taking a Korean as a foreign language class at Georgia State University are participating in this project. The goals of this project are to explore how Korean is used in multilingual contexts, to compare and contrast the use of Korean in diverse multilingual environments, and eventually to find a connection between linguistic environments outside the class and the language lessons in the class. Utilizing the power of technologies to enhance language learning, the goal of this project is to do deep mapping, incorporating the students’ oral histories and their linguistic landscape projects. This participatory research shows how geopolitics can be connected to language learning and teaching, and it will become an important topic critical to urban research.

The pedagogical implications are made not only with special reference to the local context and particular language, but also to the broader educational domain and other languages or national settings where learning a language with authentic materials has increasingly become a key component. Language learning occurs in various environments. Whatever the setting, this study will present how technology—ubiquitous, pervasive and forever changing—shapes the learners’ experiences of learning as well as teachers’ teaching in the language classroom.

Bio
Dr. Thoms is Associate Professor, Associate Chair, and Undergraduate Director in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at GSU where he has been since 1995. He graduated with a BS in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1983. He completed both MS and PhD in Physics at Cornell University in 1987 and 1992, respectively, specializing in experimental investigations of semiconductor surfaces using electron spectroscopies. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC from 1992 to 1995 investigating wide bandgap semiconductor surfaces including diamond and silicon carbide. Dr. Thoms continued his surface science research at GSU studying Group III nitrides (GaN and InN) before transitioning to physics education research over the last ten years. He led the
introduction of a physics teacher track within the BS in Physics contributing to making GSU a recognized leader in the preparation of well-qualified high school physics teachers and receiving the PhysTEC 5+ Club Award three times in the last four years.

Project Description
Laboratory experiments are an integral part of physics teaching, yet often lab components in introductory courses involve following cookbook
instructions to verify theory resulting in little learning and poor student attitudes. In this project, the introductory algebra-based physics laboratories will be redesigned to emphasize inquiry and allow students to be active decision-makers in the experiments. Many times introductory labs are constructed to have many different goals and often they accomplish few if any of them. The main goal of the redesigned labs will be focused on students' conceptual understanding, especially
regarding known difficulties. However, it is also of interest to improve students' view of physics and science in general and to help them adopt a more expert-like scientific perspective. The result of this redesign will be evaluated using published instruments to measure students' conceptual understanding in both mechanics and electromagnetism. In addition, another instrument will be used to evaluate students' attitudes about science. Baseline data from previous semesters has already been collected.

Other Research
Within our research group we are also investigating factors and characteristics influencing students' decision-making regarding pursuit
of an undergraduate physics degree. Retention of students in STEM disciplines is an issue of national importance, especially retention and
graduation of students belonging to under-represented groups. The field of physics has more serious issues with representation and diversity
than most other STEM fields. GSU serves an extremely diverse community which offers the opportunity to investigate students' decision-making
regarding careers in physics with special attention to the issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and intention to pursue secondary school
teaching. Issues being studied include development of physics identity, recognition, self-efficacy, beliefs about career outcomes, and integration into an academic community.