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Many early career educators, such as teaching assistants (TAs) in college courses, as well as pre-college educators, need help both with content and pedagogical knowledge to effectively help their students learn. One pedagogical approach…
Teaching assistants (TAs) are heavily used in computer science courses as a way to handle high enrollment and still being able to offer students individual tutoring and detailed assessments. TAs are themselves students who take on this…
While it is well known which curricular practices can improve student performance on measures of conceptual understanding, the sustaining of these practices and the role of faculty members in implementing these practices are less well…
Improving students' understanding of the nature of experimental physics is often an explicit or implicit goal of undergraduate laboratory physics courses. However, lab activities in traditional lab courses are typically characterized by…
Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment (TEFA) is a pedagogy for teaching with classroom response technology. Teacher Learning of TEFA is a five-year research project studying teacher change, in the context of an intensive professional…
Calls for reform to instructional labs means many instructors and departments are facing the daunting task of identifying goals for their introductory lab courses. Fortunately, the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) released a…
Given a physics scenario, different problem types presenting that scenario in various ways can emphasize different instructional goals. In this investigation, we examined the views of physics graduate teaching assistants (TAs) about the…
A thoughtful approach to designing and improving labs, particularly at the advanced level, is critical for the effective preparation of physics majors for professional work in industry or graduate school. With that in mind, physics…
The authors use an action research (AR) approach in a collegiate studio physics class to investigate the power of partnerships via conferences as they relate to issues of establishing a student/mentor rapport, empowering students to reduce…
Instilling good laboratory working attitudes in students is a difficult but very important task, especially in the first level courses. The introduction of a grade, based on the observation of work practices during laboratory sessions, can…
We redesigned an advanced physics laboratory course to include a project component. The intention was to address learning outcomes such as modeling, design of experiments, teamwork, and developing technical skills in using apparatus and…
The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…
Physics outreach programs provide a critical context for informal experiences that promote the transition from new student to contributing physicist. Prior studies have suggested a positive link between participation in informal physics…
Active methodologies aim to develop a critical sense of what is learned, relating theoretical concepts to the practical environment. In this work, we propose an active teaching-learning methodology for laboratory classes in which the…
We investigated physics students' learning experience and behaviour in a second-year laboratory by analyzing transcribed audio recordings of laboratory sessions. One student group was given both a problem and procedure and asked to analyze…
Helping students learn to think like a physicist is an important goal of many introductory physics courses. One characteristic distinguishing more experienced physicists from novice students is that they make better use of problem solving…
Most, if not all, physics undergraduate degree programs include instructional lab experiences. Physics lab instructors, both faculty and staff, are instrumental to student learning in instructional physics labs. However, the faculty-staff…
We have designed an introductory laboratory course that engaged first-year undergraduate students in two complementary types of iteration: (1) iterative improvement of experiments through cycles of modeling systems, designing experiments,…
Students' attitudes and approaches to problem solving in physics can greatly impact their actual problem solving practices and also influence their motivation to learn and ultimately the development of expertise. We developed and validated…
Providing timely and personalized feedback to large numbers of students is a long-standing challenge in programming courses. Relying on human teaching assistants (TAs) has been extensively studied, revealing a number of potential…