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When deploying online homework in physics courses, an important consideration is how many attempts should be allowed in order to solve numerical free-response problems. While on the one hand, the maximum number of attempts should be large…
Students often begin physics courses with misconceptions rooted in everyday experience and intuition, which can be resistant to change. While research has identified strategies for addressing misconceptions across physics, it remains…
Introductory undergraduate courses in classical physics stress a perspective that can be characterized as realist; from this perspective, all physical properties of a classical system can be simultaneously specified and thus determined at…
We describe the impact of physics education research-based pedagogical techniques in flipped and active-engagement non-flipped courses on student performance on validated conceptual surveys. We compare student performance in courses which…
We investigated physics students' learning experience and behaviour in a second-year laboratory by analyzing transcribed audio recordings of laboratory sessions. One student group was given both a problem and procedure and asked to analyze…
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…
Symbolic calculators like Mathematica are becoming more commonplace among upper level physics students. The presence of such a powerful calculator can couple strongly to the type of mathematical reasoning students employ. It does not merely…
In computer science, students could benefit from more opportunities to learn important, high-level concepts and to improve their learning skills. Peer review is one method to encourage this by providing students with the opportunity to…
AI-supported tools can help learners overcome challenges in programming education by providing adaptive assistance. However, existing research often focuses on individual tools rather than deriving broader design recommendations. A key…
The mindset literature is a longstanding area of psychological research focused on beliefs about intelligence, response to challenge, and goals for learning (Dweck, 2000). However, the mindset literature's applicability to the context of…
At the University of Colorado Boulder, as part of our broader efforts to transform middle- and upper-division physics courses, we research students' difficulties with particular concepts, methods, and tools in classical mechanics,…
Prior research suggests that using evidence-based pedagogies can not only improve learning for all students, it can also reduce the gender gap. We describe the impact of physics education research based pedagogical techniques in flipped and…
Performance in introductory courses, particularly physics, is often crucial for student success in STEM majors and can impact an individual's tendency to persist in their chosen field. To enhance students' individual learning experiences,…
Physics students can encounter difficulties in physics problem solving as a result of failing to use knowledge that they have but do not perceive as relevant or appropriate. In previous work the authors have demonstrated that some of these…
In this article we describe special type of mathematical problems that may help develop teaching methods that motivate students to explore patterns, formulate conjectures and find solutions without only memorizing formulas and procedures.…
As we typically teach in an introductory mechanics course, choosing a "good" reference frame with convenient axes may present a major simplification to a problem. Additionally, knowing some conserved quantities provides an extremely…
Plagiarism in introductory programming courses is an enormous challenge for both students and institutions. For students, relying on the work of others too early in their academic development can make it impossible to acquire necessary…
We consider active learning under incentive compatibility constraints. The main application of our results is to economic experiments, in which a learner seeks to infer the parameters of a subject's preferences: for example their attitudes…
The paper describes two general problems encountered in computational assignments at the introductory level. First, novice students often treat computer code as almost magic incantations, and like novices in many fields, have trouble…
One of the objectives of the undergraduate physics curriculum is for students to become aware of the connections between the fundamental principles of classical physics and their personal experience. Nonetheless, numerous studies have shown…