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Undergraduate physics students are known to have difficulties with understanding mathematical tools, and with applying their knowledge of mathematics to physical contexts. Using survey statements based on student interviews and written…
Researchers in physics education have advocated both for including modeling in science classrooms as well as promoting student engagement with sensemaking. These two processes facilitate the generation of new knowledge by connecting to…
Expanding our knowledge of student difficulties in advanced undergraduate electromagnetism is essential if we are to develop effective instructional interventions. Drawing on an analysis of course materials, in-class observations and…
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…
Students' attitudes and approaches to problem solving in physics can greatly impact their actual problem solving practices and also influence their motivation to learn and ultimately the development of expertise. We developed and validated…
Prior research has demonstrated how the realist perspectives of classical physics students can translate into specific beliefs about quantum phenomena when taking an introductory modern physics course. Student beliefs regarding the…
We describe a study on the conceptual difficulties faced by college students in understanding hydrodynamics of ideal fluids. This study was based on responses obtained in hundreds of written exams and oral interviews, which were held with…
Conflict in research teams was a near-ubiquitous phenomenon, with the three top issues being lack of respect or overconfidence, non-collegial behaviour and authorship. Most frequently involved (and perceived as most helpful) were informal…
The ability to emotionally or intellectually understand another person's thoughts and feelings-empathy-can foster critical connections that facilitate learning and collaboration. We present a case study of physics faculty that examines…
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…
We report on memory effects involved in the transient frictional response of a contact interface between a silicone rubber and a spherical glass probe when it is perturbed by changes in the orientation of the driving motion or by velocity…
A simple model to help students see the connections between a physics course and their engineering major is described. "Bridging" had positive effects on performance, attitude, and motivation, as measured by grade analyses, surveys, and…
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…
Humans have a remarkable ability to use physical commonsense and predict the effect of collisions. But do they understand the underlying factors? Can they predict if the underlying factors have changed? Interestingly, in most cases humans…
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…
In a lesson on holography a tension is to be found between the ray model, the wave model, the phasor model and the particle model. Lessons depend on the previous experiences of the students, the intentions of the teacher as well as on other…
In this paper, we propose a method for transferring feature representation to lightweight student models from larger teacher models. We mathematically define a new notion called \textit{perception coherence}. Based on this notion, we…
We present examples where the use of belief functions provided sound and elegant solutions to real life problems. These are essentially characterized by ?missing' information. The examples deal with 1) discriminant analysis using a learning…
In this meta-analysis, we synthesize the results of 24 studies using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) and the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX) to answer several questions: (1) How does physics…
Students in introductory physics struggle with vector algebra and these challenges are often associated with contextual and representational features of the problems. Performance on problems about cross product direction is particularly…