It is now fairly well documented that traditionally taught, large-scale introductory physics courses fail to teach our students the basics. In fact, often these same courses have been found to teach students things we do not want. Based on decades of research in physics education, we have identified a variety of educational environments and practices that are productive for an increasingly diverse population of students in the physics classroom. This talk present a brief survey of physics education research and some the theoretical and experimental developments emerging from the University of Colorado, including research on:

• Students’ beliefs about physics and learning physics (and how these affect learning and student retention)
• The use of computer simulations and when they are more effective than real equipment
• The role of representations (graphs, math, words, figures) in student learning and how student learning is far more sensitive than to representational format than we might expect
• The not so surprising result that students generally do not read the textbook, and the somewhat surprising result that this does not appear to impact student grades