Related papers: Assessing Learning in Small Sized Physics Courses
Many statisticians regularly teach large lecture courses on statistics, probability, or mathematics for students from other fields such as business and economics, social sciences and psychology, etc. The corresponding exams often use a…
The Physics Inventory of Quantitative Literacy (PIQL), a reasoning inventory under development, aims to assess students' physics quantitative literacy at the introductory level. The PIQL's design presents the challenge of isolating types of…
One desired outcome of introductory physics instruction is that students will develop facility with reasoning quantitatively about physical phenomena. Little research has been done regarding how students develop the algebraic concepts and…
In an effort to improve the quality of citizen engagement in workplace, politics, and other domains in which quantitative reasoning plays an important role, Quantitative Literacy (QL) has become the focus of considerable research and…
Item Response Theory (IRT) models aim to assess latent abilities of $n$ examinees along with latent difficulty characteristics of $m$ test items from categorical data that indicates the quality of their corresponding answers. Classical…
Item Response Theory (IRT) is a popular assessment method used in education measurement, which builds on an assumption of a probability framework connecting students' innate ability and their actual performances on test items. The model…
This is the first in a series of papers that analyze college student beliefs in realms where common astronomy misconceptions are prevalent. Data was collected through administration of an inventory distributed at the end of an introductory…
Mathematical reasoning flexibility across physics contexts is a desirable learning outcome of introductory physics, where the math world and physical world meet. Physics Quantitative Literacy (PQL) is a set of interconnected skills and…
Although an important goal of introductory physics labs is to train students in scientific reasoning and critical thinking, currently there are no standard tests in physics designed to assess such skills. We are in the process of developing…
We have developed the Physics Inventory of Quantitative Literacy (PIQL) as a tool to measure students' quantitative literacy in the context of introductory physics topics. We present the results from various quantitative analyses used to…
Conceptual tests are widely used by physics instructors to assess students' conceptual understanding and compare teaching methods. It is common to look at students' changes in their answers between a pre-test and a post-test to quantify a…
Assessing student learning is a cornerstone of educational practice. Standardized assessments have played a significant role in the development of instruction, curricula, and educational spaces in college physics. However, the use of these…
There are a plethora of concept inventories in physics available for faculty to use, but it is not always clear exactly why you would use these tests, or how you should administer them and interpret the results. These multiple-choice…
AI-driven materials discovery that couples automated experimentation with algorithmic decision-making requires process aware recipe to property predictors that are accurate, calibrated, and physically admissible. We approach this as a…
Conceptual inventory surveys are routinely used in education research to identify student learning needs and assess instructional practices. Students might not fully engage with these instruments because of the low stakes attached to them.…
Proficiency with calculating, reporting, and understanding measurement uncertainty is a nationally recognized learning outcome for undergraduate physics lab courses. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is a research-based assessment…
The Rasch model is one of the most fundamental models in \emph{item response theory} and has wide-ranging applications from education testing to recommendation systems. In a universe with $n$ users and $m$ items, the Rasch model assumes…
This paper presents the first item response theory (IRT) analysis of the national data set on introductory, general education, college-level astronomy teaching using the Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory (LSCI). We used the…
The paper describes a curricular framework for introducing microcontroller programming in the University Physics lab. The approach makes use of Modeling Instruction, an effective approach for teaching science at the secondary level in which…
Despite the significant amount of time undergraduate students spend in introductory physics labs, there is little consensus on instructional goals and accepted diagnostic assessments for these labs. In response to these issues, we have…