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Interactions among living organisms, from bacteria colonies to human societies, are inherently more complex than interactions among particles and nonliving matter. Group interactions are a particularly important and widespread class,…
In this research, we investigated the impact of peer collaboration and changes from individual to group performance of graduate students on the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) without any guidance from the instructor.…
One area of physics education research has focused on the nature of ontologies (mental categorizations of concepts, substances and processes), and how they might be used to gain insight into student thinking when learning classical physics.…
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…
A workshop using dance to introduce particle physics concepts to young children is presented. The workshop is realised in the dance studio, the children assume complete ownership of the activity and dance becomes the means to express ideas.…
Research has shown that it is challenging to change departmental culture to support the adoption of transformed teaching practices. Michigan State University is working to transform its introductory physics courses by engaging faculty in…
Introductory algebra-based physics courses frequently feature multiple student major populations in the same course section, however, different majors' requirements may impact students' motivations towards different aspects of the course…
The ability to flexibly transform between different representations (e.g., from mathematical to graphical representations) of the same concept is a hallmark of expertise. Prior research suggests that many introductory physics students show…
Physics-based reinforcement learning tasks can benefit from simplified physics simulators as they potentially allow near-optimal policies to be learned in simulation. However, such simulators require the latent factors (e.g. mass, friction…
Integrating social robots in our group-based society, beyond the technical challenges, requires considering the social group dynamics. Following the results from preliminary exploratory studies on the influence of social robots on group…
The birth and decline of disciplines are critical to science and society. However, no quantitative model to date allows us to validate competing theories of whether the emergence of scientific disciplines drives or follows the formation of…
This study uses positional analysis to describe the student interaction networks in four research-based introductory physics curricula. Positional analysis is a technique for simplifying the structure of a network into blocks of actors…
This paper describes the development of a new university physics course designed to integrate physics, education, research, and community partnerships. The coordinated system of activities links the new course to local community efforts in…
The Physics Education Group at the University of Washington is examining the extent to which students are able to use graphs of potential energy vs. position to infer kinematic and dynamic quantities for a system. The findings indicate that…
Helping students become proficient problem-solvers is one of the primary goals of physics courses. In part 1 of this article, we summarized the vast research on problem-solving relevant for physics instruction, and here we discuss a…
Representing social systems as networks, starting from the interactions between individuals, sheds light on the mechanisms governing their dynamics. However, networks encode only pairwise interactions, while most social interactions occur…
Curiosity is a vital metacognitive skill in educational contexts, leading to creativity, and a love of learning. And while many school systems increasingly undercut curiosity by teaching to the test, teachers are increasingly interested in…
This is a report on a qualitative study of students' learning where a physics computer simulation session is used to supplement lectures on the topic. Drawing on phenomenography as the analytical framework, the students' learning-focuses…
Developing expert-like problem-solving skills is a central goal of undergraduate physics education. In this study, we investigate the impact of teaching explicit problem-solving frameworks, combined with deliberate practice, on students'…
Curiosity is the strong desire to learn or know more about something or someone. Since learning is often a social endeavor, social dynamics in collaborative learning may inevitably influence curiosity. There is a scarcity of research,…