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Physics lab courses are integral parts of an undergraduate physics education, and offer a variety of opportunities for learning. Many of these opportunities center around a common learning goal in introductory physics lab courses:…
In its most general form, a `secret objective' is any inconsistency between the experimental reality and the information provided to students prior to starting work on an experiment. Students are challenged to identify the secret objectives…
Models of physical systems are used to explain and predict experimental results and observations. When students encounter discrepancies between the actual and expected behavior of a system, they revise their models to include the newly…
Our investigation of 353 faculty-produced multiple-choice Think-Pair-Share questions leads to key insights into faculty members' ideas about the discipline representations and intellectual tasks that could engage learners on key topics in…
Models of physical systems are used to explain and predict experimental results and observations. The Modeling Framework for Experimental Physics describes the process by which physicists revise their models to account for the newly…
While it is well known which curricular practices can improve student performance on measures of conceptual understanding, the sustaining of these practices and the role of faculty members in implementing these practices are less well…
This work showcases a new approach for causal discovery by leveraging user experiments and recent advances in photo-realistic image editing, demonstrating a potential of identifying causal factors and understanding complex systems…
Identifying the relevant physics principles is a central component of problem solving. A major goal of most introductory physics courses is to help students discern the deep similarities between problems based upon the physics principles so…
We present two programs that address needs to better prepare graduate students for their roles as professional physicists, particularly in the areas of teaching and education research. The two programs, Preparing Future Physicists (PFP) and…
Developing expertise in physics requires appropriate integration and assimilation of physics and mathematics. Instructors and students often describe physics courses in terms of their emphasis on conceptual and quantitative problem-solving.…
Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a given problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving it. A major focus while helping introductory physics students learn problem…
In humans and animals, curriculum learning -- presenting data in a curated order - is critical to rapid learning and effective pedagogy. Yet in machine learning, curricula are not widely used and empirically often yield only moderate…
Recent advances in our understanding of the Universe have revolutionized our view of its structure, composition and evolution. However, these new ideas have not necessarily been used to improve the teaching of introductory astronomy…
Formally investigating the sources of students' difficulties around specific subjects is crucial for developing appropriate strategies to help students. We have been studying difficulties in understanding magnetism encountered by students…
Calls to transform introductory college physics courses to include scientific practices require assessments that can measure the extent to which these transformations are effective. Such assessments should be able to measure students'…
Prequestioning is an instructional strategy that involves taking practice tests on to-be-learned information followed by studying the correct answers. Despite promising results in laboratory studies, it has rarely been examined in authentic…
If students are to successfully grapple with authentic, complex biological problems as scientists and citizens, they need practice solving such problems during their undergraduate years. Physics education researchers have investigated…
Sound educational policy recommendations require valid estimates of causal effects, but observational studies in physics education research sometimes have loosely specified causal hypotheses. The connections between the observational data…
We consider active learning under incentive compatibility constraints. The main application of our results is to economic experiments, in which a learner seeks to infer the parameters of a subject's preferences: for example their attitudes…
When education researchers describe newly developed curricular materials, they typically concentrate on the research base behind their design, and the efficacy of the final products, but do not highlight the initial stages of creating the…