Participate in a newly funded program to develop diagnostic instruments to measure the degree of expertise in physics problem solving and to develop pedagogy (especially online tutorials) to encourage expertise and assess learning styles. The online environment is the Socratic tutor MasteringPhysics.com that tracks student interactions with hints, feedback, subtasks, and followup tasks. The postdoc will collaborate in analyzing data from ~250,000 students to identify, detect, and study behaviors and habits (e.g., spreading out one's work, pausing before answering, copying homework, ...) that enhance or retard learning. See http://relate.mit.edu for related work. The postdoc will also participate in a short course introductory physics course based on modeling ideas for which we are developing a WIKI-text.
The successful candidate will have a Ph.D. or Ed.D. in science/physics education, educational psychology, cognitive science, or statistics; and must have experience in teaching physics and/or possess very strong statistics/data analysis skills. Familiarity with existing theories of learning, test design and validation, and/or analysis of large educational datasets is desirable. S/he must be comfortable working in a small group and interacting with remote collaborators. This position is a proven route to positions in academia and education companies.
Inquiries and applications (CV and names of three referees) should be sent to Ms. Joanna Keseberg (j_k@mit.edu). Position available in Spring 2009.
MIT is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer. Applications from women, minorities, veterans, older workers, and individuals with disabilities are strongly encouraged.
