Related papers: Coordination of Mathematics and Physical Resources…
In this study, we explored the extent to which problems and instructional strategies affect social cohesion and interactions for information seeking in physics classrooms. Three sections of a mechanics physics course taught at a Chilean…
This resource letter intends to provide physics instructors - particularly graduate student teaching assistants - at the introductory university level with a small but representative collection of resources to acquire a familiarity with…
During the last decade we have witnessed an impressive development in so-called interpreted languages and computational environments such as Maple, Mathematica, IDL, Matlab etc. Problems which until recently were typically solved on…
Computational physics is a key part of what it means to do physics in the twenty-first century. However, upper division computational physics remains a largely understudied area. We set out to understand the experiences of students in an…
Geometry, calculus and in particular integrals, are too often seen by young students as technical tools with no link to the reality. This fact generates into the students a loss of interest with a consequent removal of motivation in the…
Trigonometric derivatives are fundamental in both mathematics and physics, yet their proper application, particularly the distinction between radians and degrees, poses a significant challenge for college students globally. This study…
The paper describes two general problems encountered in computational assignments at the introductory level. First, novice students often treat computer code as almost magic incantations, and like novices in many fields, have trouble…
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.…
With an investigation into how students in a physics Master of science program make sense of their whole first year study experience in one of the years following a programme reform, we try to offer insights and advice to consider when…
We investigated physics students' learning experience and behaviour in a second-year laboratory by analyzing transcribed audio recordings of laboratory sessions. One student group was given both a problem and procedure and asked to analyze…
Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing and not a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. We observed groups of students solving quantum mechanics…
At the University of Colorado Boulder, as part of our broader efforts to transform middle- and upper-division physics courses, we research students' difficulties with particular concepts, methods, and tools in classical mechanics,…
Is physics education research based on a representative sample of students? To answer this question we skimmed physics education research papers from three journals for the years 1970 - 2015 looking for the number of research subjects, the…
With the aim of finding ways that can lead to solving the problem of learning the exact sciences and involving the university student in a participatory and active way during the semester period with the help of new technologies, the…
We redesigned an advanced physics laboratory course to include a project component. The intention was to address learning outcomes such as modeling, design of experiments, teamwork, and developing technical skills in using apparatus and…
The large number of published articles in physics journals under the title "Comments on ..." and "Reply to ..." is indicative that the conceptual understanding of physical phenomena is very elusive and hard to grasp even to experts, but it…
Analyzing students' written solutions to physics questions is a major area in PER. However, gauging student understanding in college courses is bottlenecked by large class sizes, which limits assessments to a multiple-choice (MC) format for…
Student learning in upper division thermal physics has not been studied to the same extent as in other courses like electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. Studies addressing reasoning and learning at the graduate level are even more…
In recent years there has been growing evidence that even after teaching designed to address the learning difficulties dictated by literature, many physics learners fail to create the proper reasoning chains that connect the fundamental…
Diversity has an important, multifaceted role in the success of education. I have used a corpus analysis of the first ten years of Physical Review Physics Education Research to investigate the diversity, broadly defined, of physics…