Related papers: Student reasoning about measurement uncertainty in…
Physics lab courses are an essential part of the physics undergraduate curriculum. Learning goals for these classes often include the ability to interpret measurements and uncertainties. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is an…
Physics lab courses are integral parts of an undergraduate physics education, and offer a variety of opportunities for learning. Many of these opportunities center around a common learning goal in introductory physics lab courses:…
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…
Measurement uncertainty and experimental error are important concepts taught in undergraduate physics laboratories. Although student ideas about error and uncertainty in introductory classical mechanics lab experiments have been studied…
Uncertainty is an important and fundamental concept in physics education. Students are often first exposed to uncertainty in introductory labs, expand their knowledge across lab courses, and then are introduced to quantum mechanical…
The aim of this study is to investigate the decisions and reasoning of undergraduate students when choosing simple measurement instruments in an introductory physics laboratory course. For this study, we have developed a questionnaire and…
Measurement uncertainty plays a critical role in the process of experimental physics. It is useful to be able to assess student proficiency around the topic to iteratively improve instruction and student learning. For the topic of…
We describe the difficulties that advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with quantum measurement within the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics. We explore the possible origins of these difficulties by analyzing student…
Measurement uncertainty is a critical feature of experimental research in the physical sciences, and the concepts and practices surrounding measurement uncertainty are important components of physics lab courses. However, there has not been…
Measurement uncertainty is an important topic in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Previous research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty has focused primarily on introductory-level students' procedural…
Research-validated multiple-choice questions comprise an easy-to-implement instructional tool that serves to scaffold student learning and formatively assess students knowledge. We present findings from the implementation, in consecutive…
Over the last five years, the McGill University Office of Science Education (OSE) has partnered with faculty members from the Department of Physics to form an education research group with the aim of charting the progression of student…
The Physics Inventory of Quantitative Literacy (PIQL), a reasoning inventory under development, aims to assess students' physics quantitative literacy at the introductory level. The PIQL's design presents the challenge of isolating types of…
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…
In an effort to improve the quality of citizen engagement in workplace, politics, and other domains in which quantitative reasoning plays an important role, Quantitative Literacy (QL) has become the focus of considerable research and…
The perspectives of introductory classical physics students can often negatively influence how those students later interpret quantum phenomena when taking an introductory course in modern physics. A detailed exploration of student…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our studies suggest this…
We have developed the Physics Inventory of Quantitative Literacy (PIQL) as a tool to measure students' quantitative literacy in the context of introductory physics topics. We present the results from various quantitative analyses used to…
We describe the difficulties advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with quantum measurement. To reduce these difficulties, we have developed research-based learning tools such as the Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorial (QuILT)…
One desired outcome of introductory physics instruction is that students will develop facility with reasoning quantitatively about physical phenomena. Little research has been done regarding how students develop the algebraic concepts and…