FEATURE
Physics 2A Proves That Learning Can Be Fun
By Cassie Myers
It sounds like a “Reading Rainbow” platitude: Learning can be fun! But what’s hidden inside the cliché may be the key to the future of education. Active learning, a type of education that involves students working directly in interactive labs to address concepts, discuss problems and understand subjects on a deeper level, has been proven effective in countless studies. But it’s also effective on the ground. In the reformed physics course Physics 2A at San José State, the students are the proving ground.
“Before taking the class, I expected another boring class full of lectures and labs in which no one had any interest in what was going on,” says Dominic Carillo, ’27 Aviation. “I could not have been more wrong. On a surface level, Physics 2A gave me a decent understanding of the fundamentals of physics. However, if we dive deeper, it allowed me to see just how fun learning could be. The lack of heavy lecturing and emphasis on learning through experimentation made for a very effective learning experience that is sure to stick with me.”
Physics 2A is a physics course for non-majors, a prerequisite for degree tracks including aviation, kinesiology and biology. As Cassandra Paul, professor of physics and astronomy, explains, in the past it was a more standard course: three hours of lecture and three hours of lab a week. But Paul, who learned about active learning in graduate school at UC Davis, brought its concepts to SJSU when she was hired in 2012. With time and the help of many contributors, she integrated active learning into a newly redesigned Physics 2A, now called reformed physics. Since 2015, every Physics 2A section at SJSU has been taught in this style.
“The focus is really on student collaboration and student sense-making,” Paul explains. “If you walk into the classroom you immediately know it's different because students are up at the boards talking about physics concepts. When I brought the course with me [from Davis], I had to make a lot of changes to the classrooms [to set them up for active learning]. We had to get whiteboards on the wall, we had to get movable desks and mobile chairs so the students could talk to each other.”
“Before taking the class, I expected another boring class full of lectures and labs in which no one had any interest in what was going on. I could not have been more wrong."
— Dominic Carillo
Josh Milstead in action as a learning assistant (or LA) in Physics 2A. Photo: Robert C. Bain.
The LAs
Physics 2A still has a lecture component, which is held online, but its main focus is the discussion labs, which involve active experimentation and collaboration. Each discussion lab is a section of roughly 20 students and includes an instructor and a learning assistant (LA), an undergraduate who successfully completed the course and is on hand to help guide current students. The active learning model turns students into teachers, teachers into students and everyone into curious physics disciples.
The LA component of the class is especially noteworthy, because the students who loved Physics 2A are eager to return and share their enthusiasm. LAs are hired by the Peer Connections program and are often placed in Physics 2A sections soon after, where they begin “LA-ing” while simultaneously taking a 3-unit LA training course through the Science Education Program that teaches them the basics of pedagogy, the science of education and how to implement active learning.
“All ideas are welcome and we respect all opinions. We never directly say, ‘You're wrong.’ That's very important for students, especially when it’s their first time taking physics. We don't want them to feel under-confident.”
— Anushree Bhattacharya
Photo courtesy of Anushree Bhattacharya.
An interactive class
The LAs are true believers. Even though they emphasize the fun of the course, they also take their jobs very seriously. Anushree Bhattacharya, ’26 Molecular Biology, speaks like an education professor even as she bubbles over with enthusiasm, citing Bloom’s taxonomy and metacognition offhandedly in a 30-minute conversation.
“When I [first] came to this class, I thought physics was such a difficult topic,” she remembers. “But the class structure made me feel like I can learn anything if I know how to organize things. It’s a very forgiving class. I enjoyed physics 2A very much, [especially compared to] my other stressful classes.”
As an international student from India, she remembered high school physics as what Paul describes as “plug-and-chug:” you work with an equation, you plug in the numbers and you find out the answer. So she was amazed to find that Physics 2A was so much more interactive.
“We always write our answers on whiteboards — the instructor tells us that everyone should take one colorful pen and write on the board,” she says. “All ideas are welcome and we respect all opinions. We never directly say ‘you're wrong.’ That's very important for students, especially when it’s their first time taking physics. We don't want them to feel under-confident.”
She also loves the exercises that demonstrate various concepts in physics. Like Paul, she mentioned a particular favorite that appears early in the course: heat packs. According to the three-phase model of matter, something that turns from liquid at room temperature to solid should freeze (like water turning into ice). But as Physics 2A instructors demonstrate, a heat pack can turn solid and heat up at the same time. How does that work?
Paul mentioned another favorite exercise: two pool balls running down two tracks at the same time, one wide and one narrow. Students would expect the balls to reach the end at the same time — but they don’t. Why not? Rotational kinetic energy.
Paul even remembers a kinesiology student marveling at an illustration of torque that showed a human arm pulling on a string: “I fundamentally don’t understand arms,” the student breathed, and yet another physics fascination was born. The exercises are designed to make students curious, and the experience clearly sticks with them much longer than a scribbled-down equation or memorized fact.
Physics 2A In Action
Fewer students dropped the reformed Physics 2A when compared with traditional course it replaced.
Historically marginalized students are
more likely to pass Physics 2A than the traditional course it replaced.
The CLASP Physics 2A course is correlated with at least
more students passing Physics 2A, and
extra students graduating from SJSU per year.
Physics 2A students get up and move around the classroom, engaging with one another in teams to help solve and understand physics problems. Photos: Robert C. Bain.
“Through trial and error, we adapt to the unpredictability of science and complex models of thinking throughout college and beyond.”
— Josh Milstead
News you can use
The LAs are also perfect examples of how the class can be, as Paul describes, “transformative.”
As a molecular biology major, Bhattacharya initially questioned the relevancy of physics for her degree. But once she realized how much the class was digging into conceptual understanding, she realized the skills she was learning could be applied more broadly. She liked how the course provided “multiple perspectives” — the students learned there was more than one way to approach or solve a problem, and that flexibility was far more valuable than the right answer to a math problem (although naturally they got there, too).
Josh Milstead, ’26 Management Information Systems, has LA’d for the class for three semesters and agrees with its philosophies. “Through trial and error, we adapt to the unpredictability of science and complex models of thinking throughout college and beyond,” he says.
The course actually changed his career trajectory — originally an engineering major, he transferred to business because of his experiences as an LA. “I found that I enjoy interacting with my co-workers and peers, and I wanted to find a job that combined networking, technology and business, which is MIS,” he explains. He plans to work in the “tech business field” and even mentions becoming a professor “sometime down the line.”
Dominic Carillo, a fellow LA who took the course during his freshman year, didn’t change his career trajectory, but the course helped him reset his approach to his own goals.
“My goal is to one day be a pilot for any of the major airlines,” he explains. “Physics 2A made me look at that goal from a different perspective. Before I can fly for the airlines, I will most likely have to be a flight instructor. In the past, I always hated the idea of this and saw it as merely a means to an end. Now, after taking Physics 2A and being a learning assistant, I’ve seen that learning and teaching can be fun and engaging. My new plan is to still fly for an airline, but to take my time and enjoy the journey to get there.”
Left: Physics 2A instructor and physics lecturer Annie Chase explains a problem to her students. Right: The students solve the problem themselves on Physics 2A whiteboards. Photos: Robert C. Bain.
Stop LA-ing us
Carillo, Milstead and Bhattacharya remember their own LAs fondly, and seek to be another link in the long Physics 2A LA chain.
Carillo calls his LA “a really friendly guy who made learning physics far easier than a traditional lab could have. He made the experience a fun one, and I hope to give my students the same experience.” He adds, “I see myself as a hands-on learner, so being able to do experiments was always fun for me. Now that I’m on the other side of the experiments, I’m excited to help guide my students through them and drive them to deeper thinking.”
Milstead encourages his students to be curious and open-minded. “Interacting with my students in a role where I’m both an SJSU employee and an undergraduate student like them helps us relate to each other,” he explains. “And I try to lighten the mood with my jokes. Sometimes they think I’m funny.”
Bhattacharya has a natural gift for teaching, brought on by a childhood spent surrounded by teachers and helping younger cousins, but she also has gained a great deal from the LA experience.
Before her time as an LA, she describes herself as “a very shy and introverted person. Just starting a conversation was so difficult for me, but after joining this learning assistant program, I’ve been able to communicate and socialize with so many people,” she says. “I know so many faces on campus that when I'm walking from one class to another, I hear ‘Hi, Anushree, how’s your day going?’ and I feel really good.” She credits this and “other wholesome experiences” with “adding to my college campus experience and also giving me a lot of professional development.”
She’s currently an LA for a different course, Biology 30, where she’s incorporating her active learning training into a larger, more lecture-based course by sharing community building exercises with her students. (Her current plan is an icebreaker: “Are you more flora or fauna?”)
And it doesn’t even stop in the classroom; it’s bled into every part of her life. When her friends ask her for help with schoolwork, she draws on her training. They want the easy way out, begging her, “Don’t LA us — give us the answers.”
But of course like any good LA, she refuses. “I tell them, ‘I can't do that. I'm too into this role. I'll help you get the answers, but I won't tell you the answers,’” she remembers. “And they say, ‘Oh my God, it can never come out of you.’”
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