Related papers: Self-Diagnosis, Scaffolding and Transfer in a More…
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…
This paper introduces a new spreadsheet tool for adoption by high school or college level physics teachers who use common assessments in a pre-instruction/post-instruction mode to diagnose student learning and teaching effectiveness. The…
Students in physics laboratory courses, particularly at the upper division, are often expected to engage in troubleshooting. Although there are numerous ways in which students may proceed when diagnosing a problem, not all approaches are…
We describe how graduate students categorize introductory mechanics problems based on the similarity of their solutions. Graduate students were asked at the end of a teaching assistant training class to categorize problems from their own…
Transfer learning involves taking information and insight from one problem domain and applying it to a new problem domain. Although widely used in practice, theory for transfer learning remains less well-developed. To address this, we prove…
The ability to categorize problems based upon underlying principles, rather than contexts, is considered a hallmark of expertise in physics problem solving. With inspiration from a classic study by Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser, we compared…
One attribute of experts is that they are likely to learn from their own mistakes. Experts are unlikely to make the same mistakes when asked to solve a problem a second time, especially if they had access to a correct solution. Here, we…
This paper explores using large isomorphic problem banks to overcome many challenges of traditional exams in large STEM classes, especially the threat of content sharing websites and generative AI to the security of exam items. We first…
To date, there is a lack of research on learning environments for pre-service physics teachers that allow them to learn and practise diagnosing students' conceptions that are (currently) not covered in physics education textbooks (e.g.…
The research presented in this thesis was motivated by the need to improve introductory physics courses. Introductory physics courses are generally the first courses in which students learn to create models to solve complex problems.…
In two earlier studies, we developed a new method to measure students' ability to transfer physics problem solving skills to new contexts using a sequence of online learning modules, and implemented two interventions in the form of…
One finding of cognitive research is that people do not automatically acquire usable knowledge by spending lots of time on task. Because students' knowledge hierarchy is more fragmented, "knowledge chunks" are smaller than those of experts.…
We investigate the difficulties that undergraduate students in quantum mechanics courses have in transferring learning from previous courses or within the same course from one context to another by administering written tests and conducting…
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…
Identifying the relevant physics principles is a central component of problem solving. A major goal of most introductory physics courses is to help students discern the deep similarities between problems based upon the physics principles so…
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…
Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a given problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving it. A major focus while helping introductory physics students learn problem…
In a companion paper, we discuss students' ability to take advantage of what they learn from a solved problem and transfer their learning to solve a quiz problem that has different surface features but the same underlying physics…
Recently, transfer learning and self-supervised learning have gained significant attention within the medical field due to their ability to mitigate the challenges posed by limited data availability, improve model generalisation, and reduce…
Framing affects how students interpret, approach, and accomplish tasks. Little is known, however, about how students frame tasks in physics labs. During the first lab of a sequence designed to teach students about modeling and critical…