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Improving students' understanding of the nature of experimental physics is often an explicit or implicit goal of undergraduate laboratory physics courses. However, lab activities in traditional lab courses are typically characterized by…
In this paper we put forth a model for physics course reform that uniquely uses proven, research-based active learning strategies to help students improve their physics knowledge and problem-solving skills. In this study, we compared the…
Traditional tests are not effective tools for diagnosing the content and structure of students' knowledge of physics. As a possible alternative, a set of term-association tasks (the "ConMap" tasks) was developed to probe the…
Assessments are usually thought of as ways for instructors to get information from students. In this work, we flip this perspective and explore how assessments communicate information to students. Specifically, we consider how assessments…
For this study, we compared the attitudes and beliefs about science of physical science (physics and mathematics) and life science (biochemistry and biology) students at the beginning of their university degrees using the CLASS (Colorado…
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…
Difficulty adjustment in practice exercises has been shown to be beneficial for learning. However, previous research has mostly investigated close-ended tasks, which do not offer the students multiple ways to reach a valid solution.…
We examine the difficulties that introductory physics students, undergraduate physics majors, and physics graduate students have with concepts related to conductors and insulators covered in introductory physics by giving written tests and…
With the adoption of instructional laboratories (labs) that require students to make their own decisions, there is a need to better understand students' activities as they make sense of their data and decide how to proceed. In particular,…
Developing expertise in physics entails learning to use mathematics effectively and efficiently as applied to the context of physical situations. Doing so involves coordinating a variety of concepts and skills including mathematical…
As part of a large-scale assessment project at a large university, we administered weekly pre-tests and bi-weekly post-tests in the recitation sections of our introductory classes over four semesters from Spring 2010 through Fall 2011. The…
We discuss the development and validation of a conceptual multiple-choice survey instrument called the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws (STPFaSL) suitable for introductory physics courses. The survey instrument…
The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…
Effective study strategies fail when preparatory tasks consume learning time. While AI educational tools demonstrate efficacy, understanding how they align with self-regulation needs in authentic study contexts remains limited. We conducted…
The objective of this project is to compare the effectiveness of teaching styles used in high school physics classes and the methods used to assess them. We would like to determine those approaches to physics at the high schools that work…
Despite the recognition that reflection is an essential part of problem solving, it is often not emphasized in upper-division physics courses. In this paper, we discuss homework corrections (HWCs) as a pedagogical tool to motivate…
A difficult challenge in physics education is to design professional development programs for teachers, which can lead to fundamental changes in their practise. We report all activities for physics teachers in the context of the National…
Instructors in introductory physics courses often use labs and demonstrations to reinforce that the physics equations introduced in lectures and textbooks describe what actually happens in the real world. The surface features and…
Projects and Practices in Physics (P$^3$) is an introductory physics class at Michigan State University that replaces lectures with a problem based learning environment. To promote the development of group based practices, students all…
For several decades, scholars have studied cooperation and its outcomes in the educational context. Yet, we lack a complete understanding of how different instructional strategies impact the relationship between cooperation and learning.…