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National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REUs) are explicitly intended to reach minoritized students in STEM and those who have few research opportunities. Many undergraduates are encouraged to seek…
Societal stereotypes and biases pertaining to who belongs in physics and who can excel in physics can impact motivational beliefs, e.g., of women and racial and ethnic minority students in physics courses. This study investigates how the…
Physics has a reputation among majority of life sciences students for being very complicated and tough. If we leave students with this impression, it is likely that students see physics class as useless and irrelevant to life sciences.…
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…
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…
Learning to think like a physicist (LTP) is often cited as a central goal of graduate physics education, yet what this means in practice and the extent to which physics graduate education prepares students to develop LTP and view LTP as…
Given the cost, both financial and even more importantly in terms of human effort, in building High Energy Physics accelerators and detectors and running them, it is important to use good statistical techniques in analysing data. Some of…
Research suggests that interacting with more peers about physics course material is correlated with higher student performance. Some studies, however, have demonstrated that different topics of peer interactions may correlate with their…
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates that U.S. institutions of higher education provide "reasonable accommodations" to students with disabilities to ensure equal educational opportunities. However, despite the key role of…
This review article provides an overview of research on the topic of gender equity in educational physics labs. As many institutions and instructors seek to evolve or transform physics lab learning, it is important that changes are made…
As students pursue a bachelor's degree in physics, they may ponder over which area to specialize in, such as theory, computation, or experiment. Often students develop preferences and dislikes, but it's unclear when this preference…
In the 60s of the last century the few courses of History of physics in Physics degree were held by scholars who, apart from a few exceptions, did not have a specific research background in the field. Some activities, books, social…
The percentage of women receiving bachelors degrees in physics in the U.S. lags well behind that of men, and women leave the major at higher rates. Achieving equity in physics will mean that women stay in physics at the same rates as men,…
Research shows that expert-like approaches to problem-solving can be promoted by encouraging students to explicate their thought processes and follow a prescribed problem-solving strategy. Since grading communicates instructors'…
We examined how introductory physics students' attitudes and approaches to problem solving compare to those of introductory astronomy students, using a previously validated survey, the Attitudes and Approaches to Problem Solving (AAPS)…
This article quantitatively examines the effects that different incentives have on students' homework completion rates in introductory physics courses at the United States Air Force Academy. Our data suggest that no more than 10-15% of the…
For the last four years, the School of Physics at Georgia Tech have been preparing new Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) through a program that integrates pedagogy, physics content, and professional development strategies. Here we discuss…
The persistent underrepresentation of women and other gender minorities in physical science fields has been an ongoing concern. This study investigates gender dynamics in introductory physics laboratory courses, focusing on whether students…
A central aim of physics education research is to understand the processes of learning and use that understanding to inform instruction. To this end, researchers often conduct studies to measure the effect of classroom interventions on…
Most STEM students experience the introductory physics sequence in large-enrollment (N $\gtrsim$ 100 students) classrooms, led by one lecturer and supported by a few teaching assistants. This work describes methods and principles we used to…