Related papers: Computational Essays in the Physics Classroom
Symbolic calculators like Mathematica are becoming more commonplace among upper level physics students. The presence of such a powerful calculator can couple strongly to the type of mathematical reasoning students employ. It does not merely…
Nolan and Temple Lang (2010) argued for the fundamental role of computing in the statistics curriculum. In the intervening decade the statistics education community has acknowledged that computational skills are as important to statistics…
We demonstrate how students' use of modeling can be examined and assessed using student notebooks collected from an upper-division electronics lab course. The use of models is a ubiquitous practice in undergraduate physics education, but…
Writing is a critical skill for modern science, enabling collaboration, scientific discourse, public outreach, and more. Accordingly, it is important to consider how physicists and astronomers are trained to write. This study aims to…
This essay considers the special character of mathematical reasoning, and draws on observations from interactive theorem proving and the history of mathematics to clarify the nature of formal and informal mathematical language. It proposes…
Excellent computer simulations are done for a purpose. The most valid purposes are to explore uncharted territory, to resolve a well-posed scientific or technical question, or to make a design choice. Stand-alone modeling can serve the…
This paper describes a collaboration between a mathematician and a compositionist who developed a sequence of collaborative writing assignments for calculus. This sequence of developmentally-appropriate assignments presents peer review as a…
This paper surveys and organizes research works in an under-studied area, which we call automated evaluation for student argumentative writing. Unlike traditional automated writing evaluation that focuses on holistic essay scoring, this…
'Cookbook' style laboratory tasks have long been criticised for the lack of critical and independent thought that students need in order to complete them. We present an account of how we transformed a 'cookbook' lab to a genuine inquiry…
Incorporating computer programming exercises into introductory physics is a delicate task that involves a number of choices that may have an effect on student learning. We present a "hybrid" approach that speaks to a number of common…
Contribution: In this study, an alternative educational approach for introducing quantum computing to a wider audience is highlighted. The proposed methodology considers quantum computing as a generalized probability theory rather than a…
In parallel to the ever-growing usage of mechanized proofs in diverse areas of mathematics and computer science, proof assistants are used more and more for education. This paper surveys previous work related to the use of proof assistants…
Quantum computing is a highly abstract scientific discipline, which, however, is expected to have great practical relevance in future information technology. This forces educators to seek new methods to teach quantum computing for students…
This paper investigates how high school students in an introductory computer science course approach computing in the Logic Programming (LP) paradigm. This qualitative study shows how novice students operate within the LP paradigm while…
Experiments performed in the Physics Laboratory play a significant role in understanding the concepts taught in the theory. A good accompanying laboratory manual serves as a concise guideline which students can use to complete the…
Since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century, quantum mechanics has challenged our conceptions of how the universe ought to work; however, the equations of quantum mechanics can be too computationally difficult to solve…
During the last decade we have witnessed an impressive development in so-called interpreted languages and computational environments such as Maple, Mathematica, IDL, Matlab etc. Problems which until recently were typically solved on…
Since the introduction of quantum mechanics, it has been taught mostly as a theoretical subject. It is also viewed as a theory that provides a best understanding of the nature, but which does not have much practical applications in our day…
The goal of this article is to clarify the meaning of Computational Thinking. We differentiate logical from computational reasoning and discuss the importance of Computational Thinking in solving problems. The three pillars of Computational…
Real-life conjectures do not come with instructions saying whether they they should be proven or, instead, refuted. Yet, as we now know, in either case the final argument produced had better be not just convincing but actually verifiable in…