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Development of conceptual multiple-choice tests related to a particular physics topic is important for designing research-based learning tools to reduce the difficulties. We explore the difficulties that the advanced undergraduate and…
Traditional tests are not effective tools for diagnosing the content and structure of students' knowledge of physics. As a possible alternative, a set of term-association tasks (the "ConMap" tasks) was developed to probe the…
Mathematics can serve many functions in physics. It can provide a computational system, reflect a physical idea, conveniently encode a rule, and so forth. A physics student thus has many different options for using mathematics in his…
Covariational reasoning -- how one thinks about the way changes in one quantity affect another quantity -- is essential to calculus and physics instruction alike. As physics is often centered on understanding and predicting changes in…
Developing and making sense of quantitative models is a core practice of physics. Covariational reasoning -- considering how the changes in one quantity affect changes in another, related quantity -- is an essential part of modeling…
Causal diagrams are logic and graphical tools that depict assumptions about presumed causal relations. Such diagrams have proven effective in tackling a variety of problems in social sciences and epidemiology research yet remain foreign to…
If students are to successfully grapple with authentic, complex biological problems as scientists and citizens, they need practice solving such problems during their undergraduate years. Physics education researchers have investigated…
Effective physics learning, especially in complex topics, requires balancing mathematical formalism with conceptual understanding. Conceptual problem-solving involves connecting math to physical reality, and using an epistemological…
The method of images (MoI) is a valuable technique for solving certain electrostatic boundary value problems consisting of charge density near conductor(s). We developed and validated an inquiry-based tutorial on MoI to help students learn…
Learning advanced physics, in general, is challenging not only due to the increased mathematical sophistication but also because one must continue to build on all of the prior knowledge acquired at the introductory and intermediate levels.…
We present a new algorithm for exactly solving decision making problems represented as influence diagrams. We do not require the usual assumptions of no forgetting and regularity; this allows us to solve problems with simultaneous decisions…
Physicists study a wide variety of phenomena creating new interdisciplinary research fields by applying theories and methods originally developed in physics in order to solve problems in economics, social science, biology, medicine,…
Background: Software modelling is a creative yet challenging task. Modellers often find themselves lost in the process, from understanding the modelling problem to solving it with proper modelling strategies and modelling tools. Students…
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…
Researchers in physics education have advocated both for including modeling in science classrooms as well as promoting student engagement with sensemaking. These two processes facilitate the generation of new knowledge by connecting to…
A survey was developed to probe student understanding of quantum mechanics at the beginning of graduate instruction. The survey was administered to 202 physics graduate students enrolled in first-year quantum mechanics courses from seven…
Recent studies on computer vision mainly focus on natural images that express real-world scenes. They achieve outstanding performance on diverse tasks such as visual question answering. Diagram is a special form of visual expression that…
In this study, we examine introductory physics students' ability to perform analogical reasoning between two isomorphic problems which employ the same underlying physics principles but have different surface features. Three hundred and…
Prompting is a common approach for leveraging LMs in zero-shot settings. However, the underlying mechanisms that enable LMs to perform diverse tasks without task-specific supervision remain poorly understood. Studying the relationship…
In this study, we explored the extent to which problems and instructional strategies affect social cohesion and interactions for information seeking in physics classrooms. Three sections of a mechanics physics course taught at a Chilean…