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The abilities of Generative-Artificial Intelligence (AI) to produce real-time, sophisticated responses across diverse contexts has promised a huge potential in physics education, particularly in providing customized feedback. In this study,…
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…
A recent paper by Salehi et al. claims that the differences found between major demographic groups on scores in introductory college physics tests are due to differences in pre-college preparation. No evidence is produced, however, to show…
Group work is becoming increasingly common in introductory physics classrooms. Understanding how students engage in these group learning environments is important for designing and facilitating productive learning opportunities for…
Many instructors choose to assess their students using open-ended written exam items that require students to show their understanding of physics by solving a problem and/or explaining a concept. Grading these items is fairly time…
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…
Machine learning algorithms have recently been used to predict students' performance in an introductory physics class. The prediction model classified students as those likely to receive an A or B or students likely to receive a grade of C,…
Development of conceptual multiple-choice tests related to a particular physics topic is important for designing research-based learning tools to reduce the difficulties. We explore the difficulties that the advanced undergraduate and…
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…
Implementation of cognitive apprenticeship in an introductory physics lab group problem solving exercise may be mitigated by epistemic views toward physics of non-physics science majors. Quantitative pre-post data of the Force Concept…
Mathematical reasoning skills are a desired outcome of many introductory physics courses, particularly calculus-based physics courses. Positive and negative quantities are ubiquitous in physics, and the sign carries important and varied…
Gaining recognition as a physics person by peers is an important contributor to undergraduate students' physics identity and their success in physics courses. Previous research has separately demonstrated that women perceive less…
From industry to government to academia, attracting and retaining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors is recognized as a key element of the 21$^{\text{st}}$ century knowledge economy. The ability to retain students…
The ability to flexibly transform between different representations (e.g., from mathematical to graphical representations) of the same concept is a hallmark of expertise. Prior research suggests that many introductory physics students show…
Recruiting and retaining highly qualified physics and physical science teachers is critical for maintaining America's global competitiveness. Unfortunately, only one third of the high school teachers in physics have a degree in physics and…
We discuss an investigation exploring students' difficulties with equations involving resistance, capacitance and inductance. We find that introductory physics students have great difficulty understanding, e.g., how the resistance of an…
Throughout introductory physics, students create and interpret free body diagrams in which multiple forces act on an object, typically at a single location (the object's center of mass). The situation increases in difficulty when multiple…
Solving exercise problems by yourself is a vital part of developing a mechanical understanding. Yet, most mechanics lectures have more than 200 participants, so the workload for manually creating and correcting assignments limits the number…
The study guide (textbook) is part of a set of materials designed to support high-quality practical training in physics. It includes a collection of tasks for organizing both in-class and independent work. The guide serves as a foundation…
We introduce a notion of complexity of diagrams (and in particular of objects and morphisms) in an arbitrary category, as well as a notion of complexity of functors between categories equipped with complexity functions. We discuss several…