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When we teach physics to prospective scientists and engineers we are teaching more than the "facts" of physics - more, even, than the methods and concepts of physics. We are introducing them to a complex culture - a mode of thinking and the…
Physics outreach programs provide a critical context for informal experiences that promote the transition from new student to contributing physicist. Prior studies have suggested a positive link between participation in informal physics…
Pre-class reading assignments help prepare students for active classes by providing a first exposure to the terms and concepts to be used during class. We investigate if the use of inquiry-oriented PhET-based activities in conjunction with…
Physics students now have access to interactive molecular dynamics simulations that can model and animate the motions of hundreds of particles, such as noble gas atoms, that attract each other weakly at short distances but repel strongly…
What is the right way to reason about human activities? What directions forward are most promising? In this work, we analyze the current state of human activity understanding in videos. The goal of this paper is to examine datasets,…
Student-to-student interactions are foundational to many active learning environments, but are most often studied using qualitative methods. Network analysis tools provide a quantitative complement to this picture, allowing researchers to…
Introductory undergraduate courses in classical physics stress a perspective that can be characterized as realist; from this perspective, all physical properties of a classical system can be simultaneously specified and thus determined at…
Even though there has been a tremendous amount of research done in how to help students learn physics, students are still coming away missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: why bother with physics? Students learn fundamental laws and how to…
Teachers in conventional classrooms often ask learners to express themselves and show their thought processes by speaking out loud, drawing on a whiteboard, or even using physical objects. Despite the pedagogical value of such activities,…
We propose a multimodal approach for detection of students' behavioral engagement states (i.e., On-Task vs. Off-Task), based on three unobtrusive modalities: Appearance, Context-Performance, and Mouse. Final behavioral engagement states are…
We present a method to study engagement level uniformity in a class of students. We validate our method by comparing two semesters taught using different methods in a physics and mathematics course. The first semester used conventional…
Virtual agents are commonly used in physical activity interventions to support behavior change, often taking the role of coaches that deliver encouragement and feedback. While effective for compliance, this role typically lacks relational…
The formal definition of limit is one mathematical idea that gives difficulties to most students. Therefore, it is necessary to provide engaging activity in order to construct the students' understanding about the definition. This study…
Reasoning about objects, relations, and physics is central to human intelligence, and a key goal of artificial intelligence. Here we introduce the interaction network, a model which can reason about how objects in complex systems interact,…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our studies suggest this…
This study investigates how an urban, high school physics class responded to the inclusion of a classroom set of iPads and associated applications, such as screencasting. The participatory roles of students and the expressions of their…
Proficiency with calculating, reporting, and understanding measurement uncertainty is a nationally recognized learning outcome for undergraduate physics lab courses. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is a research-based assessment…
The research presented in this thesis was motivated by the need to improve introductory physics courses. Introductory physics courses are generally the first courses in which students learn to create models to solve complex problems.…
This article describes how the author successfully adapted techniques drawn from the literature on active learning for use in a graduate-level course on quantum field theory. Students completed readings and online questions ahead of each…
Understanding how an instructional approach shapes student's cognitive resources and engagement is central to improving undergraduate physics education especially for novice learners. This study examines how three instructional modalities…