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We use four years of introductory astronomy scores to analyze the ability of the current population to perform college level work and measure the amount of grade inflation across various majors. Using an objective grading scale, one that is…
Many institutions are changing the focus of their introductory physics labs from verifying physics content towards teaching students about the skills and nature of science. As instruction shifts, so too will the ways students approach and…
Research-based active learning approaches are critical for the teaching and learning of undergraduate STEM majors. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are becoming more commonplace in traditional, in-person academic…
This paper reports on an investigation into the correlations between students' understandings of introductory astronomy concepts and the correctness and coherency of their written responses to targeted Lecture-Tutorial questions. We…
We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town. This course is taken by a diverse range of students, including many from educationally…
Research in astronomy education has uncovered that many learners possess limited and fragmented understanding of stars. The corresponding misconceptions manifest in various areas such as star formation, size, the relationship between stars…
Design and scientific investigation are recognized as key components of undergraduate physics laboratory curricula. In light of this, many successful lab programs have been developed to train students to develop these abilities, and…
Framing affects how students interpret, approach, and accomplish tasks. Little is known, however, about how students frame tasks in physics labs. During the first lab of a sequence designed to teach students about modeling and critical…
The ground-breaking image of a black hole's event horizon, which captured the public's attention and imagination in April 2019, was captured using the power of interferometry: many separate telescopes working together to observe the cosmos…
Building on successful work on studying and transforming our senior-level Advanced Lab course, we have transformed our junior-level Electronics course to engage students in a variety of authentic scientific practices, including…
CONTRIBUTION: This paper presents an empirical study of an introductory-level programming course with students using multiple monitors and compares their performance and self-reported experiences versus students using a single monitor.…
Explainer videos are increasingly used to support science learning. While prior research has demonstrated their potential, studies have also identified limitations - particularly their tendency to foster an illusion of understanding, where…
A series of tutorials, assessments, and instructor guides are presented as a complete package for an upper-level undergraduate, or lower-level graduate, laboratory-based course, or extended new-student seminar. The purpose of this package…
Practical research was conducted to cultivate students' mathematical computation ability using literature analysis, theoretical practice, and statistical analysis methods. The research involved 171 ninth-grade students from the author's…
We report on our ongoing efforts to develop, implement, and test VR activities for the introductory astronomy course and laboratory. Specifically, we developed immersive activities for two challenging "3D" concepts: Moon phases, and stellar…
With a sky brightness monitor in Xinglong station of National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), we collected data from 22 dark clear nights and 90 lunar nights. We first measured the sky brightness variation with time in dark…
Optics is an important subfield of physics required for instrument design and used in a variety of other disciplines, including materials science, physics, and life sciences such as developmental biology and cell biology. It is important to…
This study examines the impact of a remote laboratory experiment on Physics learning, using a case study approach. Societal advancements over the past century have spurred discussions regarding restructuring the current educational system,…
Instructional labs are widely seen as a unique, albeit expensive, way to teach scientific content. We measured the effectiveness of introductory lab courses at achieving this educational goal across nine different lab courses at three very…
We present a study of LLM integration in final-year undergraduate astronomy education, examining how students develop AI literacy through structured guidance and documentation requirements. We developed AstroTutor, a domain-specific…