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While lab courses are an integral part of studying physics aiming at a huge variety of learning objectives, research has shown that typical lab courses do not reach all the desired goals. While diverse approaches by lab instructors and…
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…
Physics Education Research (PER) is a global endeavour, with a wealth of work performed at a variety of institutions worldwide. However, results from research into undergraduate physics laboratory courses is often difficult to compare due…
Calls for reform to instructional labs means many instructors and departments are facing the daunting task of identifying goals for their introductory lab courses. Fortunately, the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) released a…
This report presents a practical approach to teaching quantum computing to Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) students through dedicated hands-on programming labs. The labs cover a diverse range of topics, encompassing…
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…
Educational technology has attained significant importance as a mechanism for supporting experiential learning of science concepts. However, the growth of this mechanism is limited by the significant time and technical expertise needed to…
We introduce a newly designed undergraduate-level interdisciplinary course in scientific computing that aims to prepare students as the next generation of research-oriented computational scientists and engineers. The course offers students…
Students in physics laboratory courses, particularly at the upper division, are often expected to engage in troubleshooting. Although there are numerous ways in which students may proceed when diagnosing a problem, not all approaches are…
New technology like the Arduino microcontroller platform presents an opportunity to transform Beyond the First Year (BFY) physics labs to better prepare physics students for work in research labs and beyond. The flexibility, low cost, and…
We have developed a set of laboratories and hands on activities to accompany a new two-semester interdisciplinary physics course that has been successfully developed and tested in two small test classes of students at the University of…
The modern engineering landscape increasingly requires a range of skills to successfully integrate complex systems. Project-based learning is used to help students build professional skills. However, it is typically applied to small teams…
Encouraging student engagement is a key aim in any educational setting, and allowing students the freedom to pursue their own methods of solving problems through independent experimentation has been shown to markedly improve this. In many…
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…
Physics lab courses permanently undergo transformations, in recent times especially to adapt to the emergence of new digital technologies and the Covid-19 pandemic in which digital technologies facilitated distance learning. Since these…
As part of ongoing investigations into student learning in advanced undergraduate courses, we have developed a conceptual assessment tool for upper-division electrodynamics (E&M II): the Colorado UppeR-division ElectrodyNamics Test…
Developing students' ability to troubleshoot is an important learning outcome for many undergraduate physics lab courses, especially electronics courses. In other work, metacognition has been identified as an important feature of…
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…
Models of physical systems are used to explain and predict experimental results and observations. The Modeling Framework for Experimental Physics describes the process by which physicists revise their models to account for the newly…
In experimental physics, lab notebooks play an essential role in the research process. For all of the ubiquity of lab notebooks, little formal attention has been paid to addressing what is considered `best practice' for scientific…