Related papers: In a physics curriculum only introductory physics …
How students use mathematics in their physics classes has been studied extensively in the physics education literature. In addition to specific mathematical methods in specific physics contexts, possible effects of more general "cultural"…
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…
This study investigated whether and how Learning Assistant (LA) support is linked to student outcomes in Physics courses nationwide. Paired student concept inventory scores were collected over three semesters from 3,753 students,…
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'…
Empirical data on early network history are rare. Students beginning their studies at a university with no or few prior connections to each other offer a unique opportunity to investigate the formation and early development of social…
Modeling Instruction (MI), an active-learning introductory physics curriculum, has been shown to improve student academic success. Peer-to-peer interactions play a salient role in the MI classroom. Their impact on student interest and…
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…
Diversity has an important, multifaceted role in the success of education. I have used a corpus analysis of the first ten years of Physical Review Physics Education Research to investigate the diversity, broadly defined, of physics…
Physics education researchers (PER) often analyze student data with single-level regression models (e.g., linear and logistic regression). However, education datasets can have hierarchical structures, such as students nested within courses,…
Instruction is unlikely to be effective if instructors do not know the common alternate conceptions of introductory physics students and explicitly take into account common student difficulties in their instructional design. Here, we…
In an academic landscape where female physicists are still strongly underrepresented, underlying causes like unconscious gender bias deserve specific attention. Members of academia are often not aware of their intrinsic, hence unconscious,…
We address previous hypotheses about possible factors influencing the gender gap in attainment in physics. Specifically, previous studies claim that male advantage may arise from multiple-choice style questions, and that scaffolding may…
The results of the National High School Examination (ENEM) are an important tool for a diagnosis of educational deficiencies at the end of a training cycle. This exam is a relevant source of data for the evaluation of what is learned by…
Most students do not enroll in introductory astronomy as part of their major; for many, it is the last science course they will ever take. Thus, it has great potential to shape students' attitudes toward STEM fields for the rest of their…
We describe the impact of physics education research-based pedagogical techniques in flipped and active-engagement non-flipped courses on student performance on validated conceptual surveys. We compare student performance in courses which…
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 deciding on a student's grade in a class, an instructor generally needs to combine many individual grading judgments into one overall judgment. Two relatively common numerical scales used to specify individual grades are the 4-point…
The Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM - Universidade Federal de Santa Maria) has trained more than 600 undergraduate and 200 Ph.D. students, becoming a reference in physics training at the Rio Grande do Sul central region. In this…
Using 6 years of evaluation data we assess the medium- and long-term impacts upon a diverse range of students, teachers, and schools from participating in a programme of protracted university-mentored projects based in cutting-edge space…
Students taking introductory physics are rarely exposed to computational modeling. In a one-semester large lecture introductory calculus-based mechanics course at Georgia Tech, students learned to solve physics problems using the VPython…