Related papers: Assessing Learning in Small Sized Physics Courses
Navigating the complexities of physics reasoning has long been a difficult task for Large Language Models (LLMs), requiring a synthesis of profound conceptual understanding and adept problem-solving techniques. In this study, we investigate…
In the U.S., introductory calculus-based courses often acts as a gatekeeper to STEM degrees. But access to the prerequisite math is far from equal--students from low-income and racially marginalized communities are far less likely to have…
This study investigates how Learning Assistants (LAs) and related course features are associated with inequities in student learning in introductory university physics courses. 2,868 physics students' paired pre- and post-test scores on…
The ability to develop, use, and refine models of experimental systems is a nationally recognized learning outcome for undergraduate physics lab courses. However, no assessments of students' model-based reasoning exist for upper-division…
Introductory physics lab instruction is undergoing a transformation, with increasing emphasis on developing experimentation and critical thinking skills. These changes present a need for standardized assessment instruments to determine the…
We present results from a study that categorizes and assesses the quality of questions and explanations authored by students, in question repositories produced as part of the summative assessment in introductory physics courses over the…
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…
Item Response Theory (IRT) has been proposed within the field of Educational Psychometrics to assess student ability as well as test question difficulty and discrimination power. More recently, IRT has been applied to evaluate machine…
The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has been widely used to assess student understanding of introductory mechanics concepts by a variety of educators and physics education researchers. One reason for this extensive use is that many of the…
The effect of class size on student learning has numerous policy implications and has been a major subject of conversation and research for decades. Despite this, few studies have been done on class size in the context of university…
Parsons problems are a type of programming activity that present learners with blocks of existing code and requiring them to arrange those blocks to form a program rather than write the code from scratch. Micro Parsons problems extend this…
Reasoning models are the new generation of Large Language Models (LLMs) capable of complex problem solving. Their reliability in solving introductory physics problems was tested by evaluating a sample of n = 5 solutions generated by one…
A comprehensive class of models is proposed that can be used for continuous, binary, ordered categorical and count type responses. The difficulty of items is described by difficulty functions, which replace the item difficulty parameters…
Traditional problem-based exams are not efficient instruments for assessing the "structure" of physics students' conceptual knowledge or for providing diagnostically detailed feedback to students and teachers. We present the Free Term Entry…
The multilabel learning problem with large number of labels, features, and data-points has generated a tremendous interest recently. A recurring theme of these problems is that only a few labels are active in any given datapoint as compared…
Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) infers a reward function from demonstrations, allowing for policy improvement and generalization. However, despite much recent interest in IRL, little work has been done to understand the minimum set of…
Particle physics, when taught in the classroom or lecture theatre, suffers from a lack of practical experience by students. Thus, we describe the construction of a fully working small particle physics detector using state of the art…
In certain academic systems, a student can enroll for an exam immediately after the end of the teaching period or can postpone it to any later examination session, so that the grade is missing until the exam is not attempted. We propose an…
As part of a large-scale assessment project at a large university, we administered weekly pre-tests and bi-weekly post-tests in the recitation sections of our introductory classes over four semesters from Spring 2010 through Fall 2011. The…
We investigate student understanding of energy and momentum concepts at the level of introductory physics by designing and administering a 25-item multiple choice test and conducting individual interviews. We find that most students have…