Related papers: Student understanding of electric and magnetic fie…
This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel…
Student learning of sound waves can be helped through the creation of group-learning classroom materials whose development and design rely on explicit investigations into student understanding. We describe reasoning in terms of sets of…
Formally investigating the sources of students' difficulties around specific subjects is crucial for developing appropriate strategies to help students. We have been studying difficulties in understanding magnetism encountered by students…
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…
Upper-division physics students spend much of their time solving problems. In addition to their basic skills and background, their epistemic framing can form an important part of their ability to learn physics from these problems.…
Students' curiosity often seems nearly nonexistent in a lecture setting; we discuss a variety of possible reasons for this, but it is the instructor who typically poses questions while only a few students, usually the better ones, respond.…
We are interested in better understanding ways that students collaborate to solve conceptual physics problems in the context of spherical unit vectors in upper-level E&M, especially problems that have been shown to be difficult for students…
Favorable outcomes from ongoing research at the University of Colorado Boulder on student learning in junior-level electrostatics (E&M I) have led us to extend this work to upper-division electrodynamics (E&M II). We describe here our…
We investigate the impact of content sequencing on student learning outcomes in a first-year university electromagnetism course. Using a custom-built online system, the McGill Learning Platform (McLEAP), we test student problem-solving…
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…
Performance in introductory courses, particularly physics, is often crucial for student success in STEM majors and can impact an individual's tendency to persist in their chosen field. To enhance students' individual learning experiences,…
We investigated students' use of Newton's second law in mechanics and electromagnetism contexts by interviewing students in a two-semester calculus-based physics course. We observed that students' responses are consistent with three mental…
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…
We are trying to identify resources students are using to reason in quantum mechanics. In this process we realize students must have not only the right resources available but sophisticated for evaluating and controlling their thought…
Questions of participant understanding of the nature of an activity have been addressed in anthropology and sociolinguistics with the concepts of frames and framing. For example, a student may frame a learning activity as an opportunity for…
The class of memory circuit elements which comprises memristive, memcapacitive, and meminductive systems, is gaining considerable attention in a broad range of disciplines. This is due to the enormous flexibility these elements provide in…
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…
Instruction in quantum mechanics is becoming increasingly important as the field is not only a key part of modern physics research, but is also important for emerging technologies. However, many students regard quantum mechanics as a…
Educational research has shown that narratives are useful tools that can help young students make sense of scientific phenomena. Based on previous research, I argue that narratives can also become tools for high school students to make…
The thesis deals with the effect of magnetic fields on elementary particle interactions, of which the neutrino is of prime concern. The initial part focuses on the quantum field theoretical description of scattering processes which involves…