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In this paper we investigate the extent to which students' problem-solving behaviors change as a result of working on multi-faceted, context-rich problems. During the semester, groups of two to three students work on several problems that…
[Taken from the "README" in the book] My goal with this book is to provide some kind of bridge for mathematics between the high-school-level and college-level for physics students. From my perspective, our job as physicists is to observe…
Imitation learning practitioners have often noted that conditioning policies on previous actions leads to a dramatic divergence between "held out" error and performance of the learner in situ. Interactive approaches can provably address…
The University of Maryland (UMD) Biology Education and Physics Education Research Groups are investigating students' views on the role of physics in introductory biology courses. This paper presents data from an introductory course that…
Symbolic equations are one of the many representations used in physics. Understanding these representations is important for students because they are how students access knowledge in physics. In this paper I build off of the work by Redish…
In recent years there has been growing evidence that even after teaching designed to address the learning difficulties dictated by literature, many physics learners fail to create the proper reasoning chains that connect the fundamental…
The vast corpus of physics equations forms an implicit network of mathematical relationships that traditional analysis cannot fully explore. This work introduces a graph-based framework combining neural networks with symbolic analysis to…
Mathematics is an essential element of physics problem solving, but experts often fail to appreciate exactly how they use it. Math may be the language of science, but math-in-physics is a distinct dialect of that language. Physicists tend…
This study introduces a mediation analysis framework when the mediator is a graph. A Gaussian covariance graph model is assumed for graph representation. Causal estimands and assumptions are discussed under this representation. With a…
Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving it. One major focus while helping introductory physics students learn effective…
Models of physical systems are used to explain and predict experimental results and observations. The Modeling Framework for Experimental Physics describes the process by which physicists revise their models to account for the newly…
Identifying the relevant physics principles is a central component of problem solving. A major goal of most introductory physics courses is to help students discern the deep similarities between problems based upon the physics principles so…
Introductory physics labs can be designed and studied using the Communities of Practice framework, where a group of members pursues a common set of goals by learning and implementing a set of practices. Studies of student preferences and…
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…
Physicists and physics students have been studied with respect to the variation in ways they expound on their topic of research and a physics problem, respectively. A phenomenographic approach has been employed; six fourth-year physics…
We describe a project-based computational physics course developed using a backwards course design approach. From an initial competency-based model of problem solving in computational physics, we interviewed faculty who use these tools in…
Analysis of institutional data for physics majors showing predictive relationships between required mathematics and physics courses in various years is important for contemplating how the courses build on each other and whether there is…
Student attitudes and approaches to problem solving can impact how well they learn physics. Prior research in the US using a validated Attitude and Approaches to Problem Solving (AAPS) survey suggests that there are major differences…
Despite the prevalence of physics education research literature related to problem solving, recent studies have illustrated that opportunities for ``authentic'' problem solving -- conceptualized as making decisions with limited information…
Mathematical learning environments help students in mastering mathematical knowledge. Mature environments typically offer thousands of interactive exercises. Providing feedback to students solving interactive exercises requires domain…