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Recently, there has been increased attention to improving laboratory instruction at all levels. At the introductory level, research results have shown differing levels of success based on the nature of the desired learning outcomes. In…
Students must learn effective problem solving strategies in order to develop expertise in physics. Effective problem solving strategies include a conceptual analysis of the problem followed by planning of the solution, and then…
Science education at all levels is currently undergoing dramatic changes to its curricula and developing assessments for these new curricula is paramount. We have used the basis of many of these new changes (scientific practices,…
We report the conceptual inventory results of a large-scale assessment project at a large university. We studied an attempt at introducing materials and instructional methods informed by physics education research (PER-informed materials)…
Calls to transform introductory college physics courses to include scientific practices require assessments that can measure the extent to which these transformations are effective. Such assessments should be able to measure students'…
We describe the development of a course of quantum mechanics for secondary school designed to address the challenges related to the revision of classical knowledge, to the building of a well-organized knowledge structure on the discipline,…
The use of validated conceptual assessments alongside more standard course exams has become standard practice for the introductory courses in many physics departments. These assessments provide a more standard measure of certain learning…
Despite the prevalence of physics education research literature related to problem solving, recent studies have illustrated that opportunities for ``authentic'' problem solving -- conceptualized as making decisions with limited information…
Mastery learning improves learning proficiency and efficiency. However, the overpractice of skills--students spending time on skills they have already mastered--remains a fundamental challenge for tutoring systems. Previous research has…
Traditional lectures are commonly understood to be a teacher-centered mode of instruction where the main aim is a provision of explanations by an educator to the students. Recent literature in higher education overwhelmingly depicts this…
The objective of physics laboratory training is to develop, in students, a variety of important cognitive and psycho-motor abilities related to experimental physics. These include conceptual understanding, procedural understanding,…
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…
This article outlines a comprehensive redesign of an introductory physics laboratory course aimed at promoting active student engagement, enhancing scientific experimental skills and the development of expert-like attitudes. The redesign…
An active learning physics course (treatment) was re-organized in an attempt to increase students' problem solving abilities. This re-organized course covered all of the relevant concepts in the first 6 weeks with the final 4 weeks spent in…
Contribution: A flipped classroom approach to teaching empirical software engineering increases student learning by providing more time for active learning in class. Background: There is a need for longitudinal studies of the flipped…
Despite the large body of research showing that students in STEM classes at all levels learn better via active learning than they do via lecture, post-secondary physics and astronomy (P&A) faculty members continue to primarily use…
The introduction of active learning into physics education at the university level may be crucial for improved learning outcomes. In UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology), introductory physics has been redesigned to…
Favorable outcomes from ongoing research at the University of Colorado Boulder on student learning in junior-level electrostatics (E&M I) have led us to extend this work to upper-division electrodynamics (E&M II). We describe here our…
The objective of this article is to investigate the effect of active-learning pedagogy on learners' academic achievement and their attitude toward mathematics using both quantitative and qualitative methods. We cultivated sustainable…
Active learning comprises many varied techniques that engage students actively in the construction of their understanding. Because of this variation, different active learning techniques may be best suited to achieving different learning…