Related papers: Problem Roulette: Studying Introductory Physics in…
Introductory programming courses often rely on small code-writing exercises that have clearly specified problem statements. This limits opportunities for students to practice how to clarify ambiguous requirements -- a critical skill in…
Large language models (LLMs) have recently gained popularity. However, the impact of their general availability through ChatGPT on sensitive areas of everyday life, such as education, remains unclear. Nevertheless, the societal impact on…
In this study, we examine introductory physics students' ability to perform analogical reasoning between two isomorphic problems which employ the same underlying physics principles but have different surface features. Three hundred and…
Supervised machine learning techniques have shown promising results in code analysis and optimization problems. However, a learning-based solution can be brittle because minor changes in hardware or application workloads -- such as facing a…
Historically, the implementation of research-based assessments (RBAs) has been a driver of educational change within physics and helped motivate adoption of interactive engagement pedagogies. Until recently, RBAs were given to students…
Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) gives the promise that an agent learns good policy from high-dimensional information, whereas representation learning removes irrelevant and redundant information and retains pertinent information. In this…
This paper describes a new approach for learning from homework, called Peer-Assisted Reflection (PAR). PAR involves students using peer feedback to improve their work on open-ended homework problems. Collaborating with peers and revising…
Modeling student learning and further predicting the performance is a well-established task in online learning and is crucial to personalized education by recommending different learning resources to different students based on their needs.…
Games and puzzles play important pedagogical roles in STEM learning. New AI algorithms that can solve complex problems offer opportunities for scaffolded instruction in puzzle solving. This paper presents the ALLURE system, which uses an AI…
Providing individualized scaffolding for physics problem solving at scale remains an instructional challenge. We investigate (1) students' perceptions of a Socratic Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot's impact on problem-solving skills and…
The ability to categorize problems based upon underlying principles, rather than surface features or contexts, is considered one of several proxy predictors of expertise in problem solving. With inspiration from the classic study by Chi,…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms suffer from the dependency on accurately engineered reward functions to properly guide the learning agents to do the required tasks. Preference-based reinforcement learning (PbRL) addresses that by…
Introductory algebra-based physics courses frequently feature multiple student major populations in the same course section, however, different majors' requirements may impact students' motivations towards different aspects of the course…
Problem solving is an integral part of any physics curriculum, and most physics instructors would likely agree that the associated learner competencies are best assessed by considering the solution path: not only the final solution matters,…
Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving it. One major focus while helping introductory physics students learn effective…
Multiple-choice questions with item-writing flaws can negatively impact student learning and skew analytics. These flaws are often present in student-generated questions, making it difficult to assess their quality and suitability for…
A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The…
In this paper we investigate the extent to which students' problem-solving behaviors change as a result of working on multi-faceted, context-rich problems. During the semester, groups of two to three students work on several problems that…
As research-based self-paced e-learning tools become increasingly available, a critical issue educators encounter is implementing strategies to ensure that all students engage with them as intended. Here, we discuss the effectiveness of…
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…