Related papers: Academic performance & student engagement in level…

During the COVID-19 crisis, educational institutions worldwide shifted from face-to-face instruction to emergency remote teaching (ERT) modalities. In this forced and sudden transition, teachers and students did not have the opportunity to…

We present outcomes from curricular changes made to an introductory calculus-based physics course whose audience is primarily life science majors, the majority of whom plan to pursue post-baccalaureate studies in medical and scientific…

In this meta-analysis, we synthesize the results of 24 studies using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) and the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX) to answer several questions: (1) How does physics…

The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…

We present the impact on student self-efficacy of an introductory physics for life-science students course taught using a Team-Based Learning pedagogy. We measured self-efficacy using the validated quantitative Sources of Self-Efficacy in…

In previous work we analyzed databases for 95 classes to show that the percent grade scale was correlated with a much higher student fail rate than the 4.0 grade scale. This paper builds on this work and investigates equity gaps occurring…

Four sections of introductory physics for physical scientists and engineers (about 180 students each) are compared. One section, treatment group, was organized so that students worked to learn the classical ideas connecting forces and…

This experience report explores the effects of ungraded assignments on the learning experience of students in an introductory computing course. Our study examines the impact of ungraded assignments on student engagement, understanding, and…

Active learning strategies have been widely recognised for their effectiveness in tertiary education, yet their implementation at scale, particularly in large first-year mathematics courses, presents considerable challenges. A common method…

This article describes the successful revitalization of an undergraduate physics program. The areas of curriculum development, undergraduate research experiences and advising and retention, to name a few, are emphasized in this…

In this paper, we describe how we transformed our large-enrollment introductory physics sequence for life-science students to a Lecture/Studio format and aligned the physics concepts with authentic biological applications. We have reformed…

The Modeling Instruction (MI) approach to introductory physics manifests significant increases in student conceptual understanding and attitudes toward physics. In light of these findings, we investigated changes in student self-efficacy…

Several prior studies in introductory physics have found a gender gap on conceptual assessments such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) with male students performing better…

Education literature recommends many different strategies for structuring student group work in labs. Many of these strategies, however, have not been sufficiently evaluated for their effects on student outcomes. One prior study suggested…

Recent studies provide evidence that social constructivist pedagogical methods such as active learning, interactive engagement, and inquiry-based learning, while pedagogically more effective, can enable inequities in the classroom. By…

English Language Learners (ELLs) are frequently left on the periphery of classroom interactions. Due to misalignment of language skills, teachers and peers communicate with these students less often, decreasing the number of opportunities…

Too often, physics students are beset by feelings of failure and isolation rather than experiencing the creative joys of discovery that physics has to offer. This dissertation research was founded on the desire of a teacher to make physics…

We developed a survey to probe student understanding of quantum mechanics concepts at the beginning of graduate instruction. The survey was administered to 202 graduate students in physics enrolled in first-year quantum mechanics courses…

We have investigated the difference in persistence between male and female students while taking undergraduatephysics courses. To quantify the persistence of a certain group of students, we have defined 'persistence index' as the inverseof…

Joining a research group is one of the most important events on a graduate student's path to becoming an independent physics researcher and earning a PhD. However, graduate students' perspectives on the experience of finding a research…