Vancouver Island University's Faculty of Education

Moll, Rachel, Associate Dean, & University Professor

  • PhD, University of British Columbia
  • MSc, University of British Columbia
  • BEd, Queens University
  • BSc, Trent University

Office: Education
Building 356, Room 272
Phone: 250.753.3245 Ext. 2161
Email: Rachel.Moll@viu.ca

Rachel Moll completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. At VIU she teaches Principles of Teaching and Learning in the Post Baccalaureate program and Research Methods in the Master of Educational Leadership program. Rachel has taught physics, junior science and math in high schools and is very active in local science teacher associations. She has been on the executive board of the BC Association of Physics Teachers for seven years, two as president, and has organized and presented at numerous teacher professional development conferences.
Rachel has always been an active member of science outreach organizations such as Let’s Talk Science, amusement park physics, science competitions and summer physics camps and has won several awards for her participation in community outreach. Her thesis research examined the role of student emotions in learning while participating in science outreach programs. Her current research activities include teaching physics in real world contexts, new technologies in education and employing complexity thinking in educational research. She has received a two year research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to lead an international collaboration between Canada, Sweden and Australia. The project aims to explore how students and teachers are employing social media to learn and to teach physics. She regularly hires research assistants to help with this work.

Some recent publications and research activities include:

Moll. R.F., & Hengstler, J. (2012, April). Educating with social media: Policy and
practice in British Columbia. A paper accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, Canada.

Linder, C., & Moll, R.F. (2012, April). Emergence in science: Noticing new things in new
ways. A paper accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, Canada.

Forsman, J., Linder, C., Andersson, S., Moll, R.F., & Fraser, D. (in press). A new
approach to modeling student retention through an application of complexity thinking. A paper submitted to Studies in Higher Education (accepted, November 2011)

Moll, R.F. (2011).  Affective learning in playful learning environments: Physics outreach
 challenges. Children, Youth and Environments, 21(2), 256-270.

Moll, R.F. (2011, July). Exploring the use of social media to support teaching and
learning physics. A workshop accepted for presentation at the Western Conference of Science Education, London, ON.

Moll, R.F. (2010). An amusement park physics competition. Physics Education, 45(4),
 362-367.

Martinuk, M.S., Moll, R.F., & Kotlicki, A. (2010).  Teaching introductory physics with
 an environmental focus. The Physics Teacher, 48, 212-214.

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