Physics Education
Most STEM students experience the introductory physics sequence in large-enrollment (N $\gtrsim$ 100 students) classrooms, led by one lecturer and supported by a few teaching assistants. This work describes methods and principles we used to…
The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) partners small groups of educators with a research astronomer for a year-long authentic research project. This program aligns well with the characteristics of high-quality professional…
The current graduate school education system has largely been focusing on producing better learners and problem solvers. The rise of problem based learning approaches are testimonial to the importance of such skills at all levels of…
The traditional university science curriculum was designed to train specialists in specific disciplines. However, in universities all over the world, science students are going into increasingly diverse careers and the current model does…
The present text summarizes several factors considered as essential for teacher education according to the state of current research and best practice, with a focus on science teacher education, and as realized at the University of Geneva.
A simple experimental setup for measuring the Planck's constant, using Landauer quantization of the conductance between touching gold wires, is described. It consists of two gold wires with thickness of 0.5 mm and 1.5 cm length, and an…
PURPOSE: Critical thinkers in medical context must be not only "able" but also "willing" to think critically. To develop and conduct psychometric testing of Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory which measure the critical thinking…
We present several applications of the particle camera MX-10 in different radiation environments, leading to strikingly different observed patterns and consequently particle composition as well as recorded dose. We describe the measurements…
Background: Using digital games for educational purposes has been associated with higher levels of motivation among learners of different educational levels. However, the underlying psychological factors involved in digital game based…
Games are useful tools for introducing new concepts to students. This paper describes a competitive two-player game for sophomore students in a modern physics survey course or junior/senior students in an introductory quantum mechanics…
The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) provides a year-long authentic astronomy research project by partnering a research astronomer with small groups of educators. NITARP has worked with a total of 103 educators since…
Research on the test structure of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has largely been performed with exploratory methods such as factor analysis and cluster analysis. Multi-Dimensional Item Response Theory (MIRT) provides an alternative to…
We present an experimental setup to demonstrate normal modes and symmetry breaking in a two-dimensional pendulum. In our experiment we have used two modes of a single oscillator to demonstrate normal modes, as opposed to two single…
TUIMP (www.tuimp.org) is an international project to produce little astronomy booklets. These booklets, folded from just one sheet of paper, can be used in classrooms, at open public conferences, or during visits of observatories and…
We present aspects of the deployment of a remotely operable telescope for teaching practical science to distance learning undergraduate students. We briefly describe the technical realization of the facility, PIRATE, in Mallorca and…
Our educational systems must prepare students for an increasingly interconnected future, and teachers require equipping with modern tools, such as network science, to achieve this. We held a Networks in Classroom Education (NiCE) workshop…
The fundamental principles of quantum mechanics are considered to be hard for understanding by unprepared listeners, many attempts of its popularization turned out to be either difficult to grasp or incorrect. We propose quantum…
The Lecture-Tutorials for Introductory Astronomy have been designed to help introductory astronomy instructors actively engage their students in developing their conceptual understandings and reasoning abilities across a wide range of…
The research reported in this article represents a systematic, multi-year investigation of student understanding of the behavior of bipolar junction transistor circuits using a variety of different tasks to isolate and probe key aspects of…
[Taken from the "README" in the book] My goal with this book is to provide some kind of bridge for mathematics between the high-school-level and college-level for physics students. From my perspective, our job as physicists is to observe…