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If students are to successfully grapple with authentic, complex biological problems as scientists and citizens, they need practice solving such problems during their undergraduate years. Physics education researchers have investigated…
Physics education research has used quantitative modeling techniques to explore learning, affect, and other aspects of physics education. However, these studies have rarely examined the predictive output of the models, instead focusing on…
Quantum Computing is an exciting field that draws from information theory, computer science, mathematics, and quantum physics to process information in fundamentally new ways. There is an ongoing race to develop practical quantum computers…
Physics education research (PER) is a rapidly growing area of PhD specialization. In this article we examine the trajectories that led respondents into a PER graduate program as well as their expected future trajectories. Data were…
Background: Despite the potential benefits of software modelling, developers have shown a considerable reluctance towards its application. There is substantial existing research studying industrial use and technical challenges of modelling.…
In response to national calls to better align physics laboratory courses with the way physicists engage in research, we have developed an epistemology and expectations survey to assess how students perceive the nature of physics experiments…
We present data from a between-student study on student response to questions on Newton's Third Law given throughout the academic year. The study, conducted at Rochester Institute of Technology, involved students from the first and third of…
Quantum physics is considered as one of the most remarkable discoveries of contemporary physics grown during previous century and gradually manifested to the scientific world such as inventions of laser, the transistor, the electron…
We administered written free-response and multiple-choice questions and conducted individual interviews to investigate the difficulties that upper-level undergraduate and graduate students have with quantum states while translating state…
Dirac notation is used commonly in quantum mechanics. However, many upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in physics have difficulties with representations of quantum operators corresponding to observables especially when using…
As a result of the deep modifications of the French physics and chemistry curricula in upper secondary school during these last three years, the physics department of the Universit\'e Paris Diderot (France) wished to develop a renovation…
Transfer of learning is an important objective of education. However, students usually have difficulties in solving physics transfer tasks even after having solved similar problems previously. We investigated if instruction provided using…
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…
Identifying the relevant physics principles is a central component of problem solving. A major goal of most introductory physics courses is to help students discern the deep similarities between problems based upon the physics principles so…
Previous research has shown that students often struggle to develop an understanding of linear and quadratic relationships. Covariational reasoning has been identified as a way to support this development. This study aims to investigate how…
The revolutionary new field of Quantum Computing (QC) continues to gain attention in industry, academia, and government in both research and education. At educational institutions, there is a proliferation of introductory courses at various…
This article describes an undergraduate physics module at a university in England that places year 3 student physicists in secondary school classrooms for a semester. This is done as a way of introducing them to the occupation of secondary…
We investigate upper-division student difficulties with direct integration in multiple contexts involving the calculation of a potential from a continuous distribution (e.g., mass, charge, or current). Integration is a tool that has been…
Laboratory courses represent a unique and potentially important component of the undergraduate physics curriculum, which can be designed to allow students to authentically engage with the process of experimental physics. Among other…
The Colorado Upper-Division Electrostatics (CUE) Diagnostic is an exam developed as part of the curriculum reform at the University of Colorado, Boulder (CU). It was designed to assess conceptual learning within upper-division electricity…