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Acquiring the mathematical, conceptual, and problem-solving skills required in university-level physics courses is hard work, and the average student often lacks the knowledge and study skills they need to succeed in the introductory…
Computational thinking has been a recent focus of education research within the sciences. However, there is a dearth of scholarly literature on how best to teach and to assess this topic, especially in disciplinary science courses. Physics…
Explication and reflection on expert vs. novice considerations within the problem-solving process characterize a cognitive apprenticeship approach for the development of expert-like problem solving practices. In the context of grading, a…
It is becoming common to hear teaching advice about spending more time on the "physics of the problem" so that students will get more physical insight and develop a stronger intuition that can be very helpful when thinking about physics…
University courses in conceptual physics and astronomy typically serve as the terminal science experience for non-science majors. Significant work has gone into developing research-verified pedagogical methods for the algebra- and…
Many undergraduate students of engineering and the exact sciences have difficulty with their mathematics courses due to insufficient proficiency in what we in this paper have termed clear thinking. We believe that this lack of proficiency…
During the last decade we have witnessed an impressive development in so-called interpreted languages and computational environments such as Maple, Mathematica, IDL, Matlab etc. Problems which until recently were typically solved on…
Learning to create, use, and evaluate models is a central element of becoming a scientist. In physics, we often begin an analysis of a complex system with highly simplified or toy models. In introductory physics classes, we tend to use them…
Significant obstacles prevent large, university-level, introductory physics courses from effectively teaching problem-solving skills. We describe our program for integrating three internet-based "teaching-while-quizzing" tools to address…
Usually the first course in mathematics is calculus. Its a core course in the curriculum of the Business, Engineering and the Sciences. However many students face difficulties to learn calculus. These difficulties are often caused by the…
Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a give problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving it. A major focus while helping introductory physics students learn problem…
Computation is a central aspect of modern science and engineering work, and yet, computational instruction has yet to fully pervade university STEM curricula. In physics, we have begun to integrate computation into our courses in a variety…
Helping students learn to think like a physicist is an important goal of many introductory physics courses. One characteristic distinguishing more experienced physicists from novice students is that they make better use of problem solving…
Instruction in quantum mechanics is becoming increasingly important as the field is not only a key part of modern physics research, but is also important for emerging technologies. However, many students regard quantum mechanics as a…
Even though there has been a tremendous amount of research done in how to help students learn physics, students are still coming away missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: why bother with physics? Students learn fundamental laws and how to…
High school science classrooms across the United States are answering calls to make computation a part of science learning. The problem is that there is little known about the barriers to learning that computation might bring to a science…
Physics lab courses are an essential part of the physics undergraduate curriculum. Learning goals for these classes often include the ability to interpret measurements and uncertainties. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is an…
Covariational reasoning -- reasoning about how changes in one quantity relate to changes in another quantity -- has been examined extensively in mathematics education research. Little research has been done, however, on covariational…
Learning to think like a physicist (LTP) is often cited as a central goal of graduate physics education, yet what this means in practice and the extent to which physics graduate education prepares students to develop LTP and view LTP as…
The key difference between math as math and math in science is that in science we blend our physical knowledge with our knowledge of math. This blending changes the way we put meaning to math and even to the way we interpret mathematical…