Related papers: A Game-Centered, Interactive Approach for Using Pr…
The PICUP Collection of Exercise Sets (https://www.compadre.org/PICUP/exercises/) contains over 60 peer-reviewed computation-infused activities for use in various physics courses from high school through graduate study. Each Exercise Set…
This exploratory field study investigates the integration of innovative forms of recitation tasks in a first-year introductory mechanics course, focusing on smartphone-based experimental tasks alongside programming and standard recitation…
Scientific research involves mathematical modelling in the context of an interactive balance between theory, experiment and computation. However, computational methods and tools are still far from being appropriately integrated in the high…
Introductory mechanics ("physics 1") is a critical gateway course for students desiring to pursue a STEM career. A major challenge with this course is that there is a large spread in the students' incoming physics preparation, and this…
Calls to transform introductory college physics courses to include scientific practices require assessments that can measure the extent to which these transformations are effective. Such assessments should be able to measure students'…
We describe the development of a junior-senior level course for Physics majors designed to teach Mathematica skills in support of their undergraduate coursework, but also to introduce students to modern research level results. Standard…
In our days, the necessity of laboratory apparatus accustoming by building up specific software objects for studying the virtual evolution of physical phenomena is a major request. In this respect, the aim of the present paper is to present…
Training students in basic concepts of physics, such as the ones related to mass, volume, or density, is much more complicated than just stating the underlying definitions and laws. One of the reasons for this is that most students have…
Very little is known about how the nature of expertise in introductory and advanced courses compares in knowledge-rich domains such as physics. We develop a framework to compare the similarities and differences between learning and patterns…
In this paper, we describe how we transformed our large-enrollment introductory physics sequence for life-science students to a Lecture/Studio format and aligned the physics concepts with authentic biological applications. We have reformed…
Introductory courses on electric circuits at undergraduate level are usually presented in quite abstract terms, with questions and problems quite far from practical problems. This causes the students have difficulties to apply that theory…
The Institute of Physics New Quantum Curriculum (quantumphysics.iop.org) consists of online texts and interactive simulations with accompanying activities for an introductory course in quantum mechanics starting from two-level systems.…
We discuss the development of interactive video tutorial-based problems to help introductory physics students learn effective problem solving heuristics. The video tutorials present problem solving strategies using concrete examples in an…
University students taking introductory physics are generally successful executing mathematical procedures in context, but often struggle with the use of mathematical concepts for sense making. Physics instructors note that their students…
Integrating computation into physics teaching is a curricular move that, at present, has been predominately studied for its cognitive impacts. However, if this modality of instruction shifts how students engage with physics, we argue there…
Animation, which is basically a form of pictorial presentation, has become the most prominent feature of technology-based learning environments. It refers to simulated motion pictures showing movement of drawn objects. Recently, educational…
Students in introductory calculus-based physics not only have difficulty understanding the fundamental physical concepts, they often have difficulty relating those concepts to the mathematics they have learned in math courses. This produces…
Although physics has become increasingly computational, with computing even being considered the third pillar of physics, it is still not well integrated into physics education. Research suggests that integrating Computational Thinking (CT)…
A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The…
The cyclic format of the undergraduate physics curriculum depends on students' ability to recall and utilize material covered in prior courses in order to reliably build on that knowledge in later courses. However, there is evidence to…