Related papers: Nonlinear Psychometric Thresholds for Physics and …
Despite limiting access to applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, the practice of using hard or soft GRE cut-off scores in physics graduate program admissions is still a popular method for reducing the pool of…
Standardized assessment tests that allow researchers to compare the performance of students under various curricula are highly desirable. There are several research-based conceptual tests that serve as instruments to assess and identify…
Knowing how test takers answer items in educational assessments is essential for test development, to evaluate item quality, and to improve test validity. However, this process usually requires extensive pilot studies with human…
Writing is a critical skill for modern science, enabling collaboration, scientific discourse, public outreach, and more. Accordingly, it is important to consider how physicists and astronomers are trained to write. This study aims to…
At the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, the majority of secondary instruction in the United States transitioned to an online environment. In many parts of the country, online schooling continued for upwards of two years. Many experts have…
Perceptions of disciplinary recognition and identity can be shaped by various forms of feedback and experiences. Here we focus on the potential effects of course grades on the perceievd recognition and physics identity of students. We…
Many students in upper-division physics courses struggle with the mathematically sophisticated tools and techniques that are required for advanced physics content. We have developed an analytical framework to assist instructors and…
This article describes five common student misconceptions about succeeding in college-level Physics courses: the miracle finish, the soft hearted professor, an extension of high school, weak areas won't be tested, and passing is more…
Since the early 2000s physicists have developed an ingenious but non-rigorous formalism called the cavity method to put forward precise conjectures on phase transitions in random problems [Mezard, Parisi, Zecchina: Science 2002]. The cavity…
Given a non-negative $n \times n$ matrix viewed as a set of distances between $n$ points, we consider the property testing problem of deciding if it is a metric. We also consider the same problem for two special classes of metrics, tree…
Form a random k-SAT formula on n variables by selecting uniformly and independently m=rn clauses out of all 2^k (n choose k) possible k-clauses. The Satisfiability Threshold Conjecture asserts that for each k there exists a constant r_k…
Students' high school decisions will always impact efforts to achieve gender parity in STEM at the university level and beyond. Without a comprehensive understanding of gendered disparities in high school course selection, it will be…
Machine learning algorithms have recently been used to predict students' performance in an introductory physics class. The prediction model classified students as those likely to receive an A or B or students likely to receive a grade of C,…
We present a study of the implementation of the Electronic Preparatory Test for beginning undergraduates reading mathematics. The Test comprises two elements: diagnostic and self-learning. The diagnostic element identifies gaps in the…
The Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM - Universidade Federal de Santa Maria) has trained more than 600 undergraduate and 200 Ph.D. students, becoming a reference in physics training at the Rio Grande do Sul central region. In this…
The pursuit of knowledge in particle physics requires constant learning. As new tools become available, new theories are developed, and physicists search for new answers with ever-evolving methods. However, it is the case that formal…
It is shown that the psychometric test reliability, based on any true-score model with randomly sampled items and conditionally independent errors, converges to 1 as the test length goes to infinity, assuming some fairly general regularity…
In a previous study, students' self-expressed learning orientations towards an exercise centered on self-monitoring one's ability to solve a pre-lab physics problem were identified from a post-test feedback survey given to an introductory…
Despite the successes of the Standard Model of particle physics, it is known to suffer from a number of deficiencies. Several of these can be addressed within non-supersymmetric theories of grand unification based on $\mathrm{SO}(10)$.…
For this study, we compared the attitudes and beliefs about science of physical science (physics and mathematics) and life science (biochemistry and biology) students at the beginning of their university degrees using the CLASS (Colorado…