Related papers: Improving Students' Conceptual Understanding of Co…
We propose a unified approach to addition of resistors and capacitors such that the formulae are always simply additive. This approach has the advantage of being consistent with the intuition of the students. To demonstrate our point of…
Highly successful students, as measured by grades and by scores on the Force Concept Inventory, still struggle with fundamental concepts in mathematics and physics. These difficulties, which turn physics into parrot learning and include…
The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has been widely used to assess student understanding of introductory mechanics concepts by educators and physics education researchers. Many of the items on the FCI have strong distractor choices…
A clinical study was performed comparing the efficacy of multimedia learning modules with traditional textbooks for the first few topics of a calculus based introductory electricity and magnetism course. Students were randomly assigned to…
We discuss a case study of the influence of epistemology on learning for a student in an introductory college physics course. An analysis of videotaped class work, written work, and interviews indicates that many of the student's…
Learning advanced physics, in general, is challenging not only due to the increased mathematical sophistication but also because one must continue to build on all of the prior knowledge acquired at the introductory and intermediate levels.…
Compared with introductory physics, relatively little is known about the development of expertise in advanced physics courses, especially in the case of quantum mechanics. Here, we describe a framework for understanding the patterns of…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our studies suggest this…
The Test of Understanding Graphs in Kinematics (TUG-K) is a multiple choice test developed by Beichner to assess students' understanding of kinematics graphs. Many of the items on the TUG-K have strong distractor choices which correspond to…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our prior work has shown that…
The current work aims to better understand student course experiences for those who reported negative perceptions in introductory physics. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 students who reported negative perceptions of their…
Quantum information science and technology is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field drawing researchers from science and engineering fields. Traditional instruction in quantum mechanics is insufficient to prepare students for research…
The ability to categorize problems based upon underlying principles, rather than surface features or contexts, is considered one of several proxy predictors of expertise in problem solving. With inspiration from the classic study by Chi,…
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…
Instruction is unlikely to be effective if instructors do not know the common alternate conceptions of introductory physics students and explicitly take into account common student difficulties in their instructional design. Here, we…
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…
Developing expertise in physics requires appropriate integration and assimilation of physics and mathematics. Instructors and students often describe physics courses in terms of their emphasis on conceptual and quantitative problem-solving.…
There is some evidence that conceptual inquiry-based introductory physics lab curricula, such as RealTime Physics, may improve students' understanding of physics concepts. Thus, these curricula may be attractive for instructors who seek to…
Uncertainty is an important concept in physics laboratory instruction. However, little work has examined how students reason about uncertainty beyond the introductory (intro) level. In this work we aimed to compare intro and beyond-intro…
The method of images (MoI) is a valuable technique for solving certain electrostatic boundary value problems consisting of charge density near conductor(s). We developed and validated an inquiry-based tutorial on MoI to help students learn…