Related papers: Student Representations of Computation in the Phys…
This article describes a curricular innovation designed to help students experience authentic physics inquiry with an emphasis on computational modeling and scientific communication. The educational design centers on a new type of…
During the last decade we have witnessed an impressive development in so-called interpreted languages and computational environments such as Maple, Mathematica, IDL, Matlab etc. Problems which until recently were typically solved on…
The research presented in this thesis was motivated by the need to improve introductory physics courses. Introductory physics courses are generally the first courses in which students learn to create models to solve complex problems.…
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…
Physics education researchers have argued that authentic physics education includes computation as part of a physics student's training, and many parties have made efforts towards this goal. However, most research on this teaching modality…
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…
One of the most important active methodologies for physics learning developed in recent years is peer instruction. Its technique has allowed, among other things, to monitor students' conceptual learning. In this sense,…
Although physics has become increasingly computational, with computing even being considered the third pillar of physics, it is still not well integrated into physics education. Research suggests that integrating Computational Thinking (CT)…
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…
Physics outreach programs provide a critical context for informal experiences that promote the transition from new student to contributing physicist. Prior studies have suggested a positive link between participation in informal physics…
Developing expertise in physics requires appropriate integration and assimilation of physics and mathematics. Instructors and students often describe physics courses in terms of their emphasis on conceptual and quantitative problem-solving.…
Quantum Computing is an exciting field that draws from information theory, computer science, mathematics, and quantum physics to process information in fundamentally new ways. There is an ongoing race to develop practical quantum computers…
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…
Although most teachers acknowledge the importance of taking investigative approached in students' science learning experiences, implementing them in high-school classes can be challenging for teachers. In this work, we analyzed data from…
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"…
Traditionally, scholars in physics education research pay attention to students solving well-structured learning activities, which provide restricted room for collaboration and idea-generation due to their close-ended nature. In order to…
Theory of computing (ToC) courses are a staple in many undergraduate CS curricula as they lay the foundation of why CS is important to students. Although not a stated goal, an inevitable outcome of the course is enhancing the students'…
In our previous work we reported on a linked-courses learning community for underrepresented groups in computer science, finding differences in attitudes and resource utilization between students in the community and other programming…
This paper investigates how high school students in an introductory computer science course approach computing in the Logic Programming (LP) paradigm. This qualitative study shows how novice students operate within the LP paradigm while…
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…