Related papers: Toward Better Physics Labs for Future Biologists
Experiments performed in the Physics Laboratory play a significant role in understanding the concepts taught in the theory. A good accompanying laboratory manual serves as a concise guideline which students can use to complete the…
Improving students' understanding of the nature of experimental physics is often an explicit or implicit goal of undergraduate laboratory physics courses. However, lab activities in traditional lab courses are typically characterized by…
We describe the development of a junior-senior level course for Physics majors designed to teach Mathematica skills in support of their undergraduate coursework, but also to introduce students to modern research level results. Standard…
This paper describes our large reformed introductory physics course at UC Davis, which bioscience students have been taking since 1996. The central feature of this course is a focus on sense-making by the students during the five hours per…
Undergraduate biochemistry laboratory courses often do not provide students with an authentic research experience, particularly when the express purpose of the laboratory is purely instructional. However, an instructional laboratory course…
We present two programs that address needs to better prepare graduate students for their roles as professional physicists, particularly in the areas of teaching and education research. The two programs, Preparing Future Physicists (PFP) and…
A common feature of the recent calls for reform of the undergraduate biology curriculum has been for better coordination between biology and the courses from the allied disciplines of mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Physics has lagged…
Educators and policy-makers have advocated for reform of undergraduate biology education, calling for greater integration of mathematics and physics in the biology curriculum. While these calls reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary…
Student performance of virtual introductory physics class (calculus-based mechanics) is analyzed. A fully web-enhanced class was done synchronously. The analysis is done in two categories, averaging all mid-exams (or chapter exams) and…
In a recent report, the American Association of Physics Teachers has developed an updated set of recommendations for curriculum of undergraduate physics labs.1 This document focuses on six major themes: constructing knowledge, modeling,…
This mini-course gives an introduction to the techniques used in experimental particle physics with an emphasis on the impact of technological advances. The basic detector types and particle accelerator facilities will be briefly covered…
The American Physical Society recently released a statement calling on all university physics departments to provide or facilitate access to research experiences for all undergraduate students. In response, we investigated the current…
Student learning in instructional physics labs is a growing area of research that includes studies exploring students' beliefs and expectations about experimental physics. To directly probe students' epistemologies about experimental…
We report results from a study designed to identify links between undergraduate students' views about experimental physics and their engagement in multiweek projects in lab courses. Using surveys and interviews, we explored whether students…
Physics laboratory courses have been generally acknowledged as an important component of the undergraduate curriculum, particularly with respect to developing students' interest in, and understanding of, experimental physics. There are a…
The increasing availability of digital tools for education offers significant opportunities to enhance teaching practices and student engagement. This study presents a structured categorization of online educational tools based on their…
We have reformed a large lecture modern physics course for engineering majors by radically changing both the content and the learning techniques implemented in lecture and homework. Traditionally this course has been taught in a manner…
When education researchers describe newly developed curricular materials, they typically concentrate on the research base behind their design, and the efficacy of the final products, but do not highlight the initial stages of creating the…
The aim of this study is to investigate the decisions and reasoning of undergraduate students when choosing simple measurement instruments in an introductory physics laboratory course. For this study, we have developed a questionnaire and…
Introductory electricity and magnetism lab manual was designed to use with virtual Physics II class. The lab manual consists of experiments on electrostatics, electric potential and energy, current and resistance, DC circuits,…