Benton Community High School is bringing a new spark to science education with the use of Positive Physics, a digital learning platform being used in science classrooms. Thanks to funding from the Iowa Governor’s STEM Advisory Council’s Scale-Up Program, the school received a grant to implement the resource for the 2024-25 school year. Designed to make science more accessible and engaging, Positive Physics offers interactive, scaffolded lessons that help students build confidence and mastery through self-paced learning and immediate feedback.
The implementation of Positive Physics is already showing positive results. Students are more engaged, willing to tackle challenging problems, and better able to learn from mistakes through the platform’s self-paced and supportive structure. Embedded within the software is a randomizing feature that provides all students with the same questions but randomizes the numbers involved in solving the problem. This still provides students the opportunity to help each other, but eliminates the possibility of plagiarism and cheating. The program is currently being used across multiple grade levels including in Foundations of Science, Chemistry, Environmental Science, Physical Science, and Physics courses.
