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Physics education researchers have developed many evidence-based instructional strategies to enhance physics students' conceptual learning. These strategies have historically been tested using assessments such as the Force Concept Inventory…
Distance education has expanded significantly over the last decade, but the natural sciences have lagged in the implementation of this instructional mode. The abrupt onset of the COVID-19 pandemic left educational institutions scrambling to…
It is a common phenomenon for many mature female international students enrolled in high education overseas to experience strain from managing conflicting roles of student and family, and difficulties of cross-cultural adjustment. The…
The University of Maryland Physics Education Research Group (UMd-PERG) carried out a five-year research project to rethink, observe, and reform introductory algebra-based (college) physics. This class is one of the Maryland Physics…
Teaching scientific concepts is essential but challenging, and analogies help students connect new concepts to familiar ideas. Advancements in large language models (LLMs) enable generating analogies, yet their effectiveness in education…
Significant attention in the PER community has been paid to student cognition and reasoning processes in undergraduate quantum mechanics. Until recently, however, these same topics have remained largely unexplored in the context of emerging…
Research methods and results from physics and psychology are used to explore a question in quantum mechanics. In this investigation, an observer variable is manipulated in an experimental context concerning the trajectory of electrons…
Despite the significant amount of time undergraduate students spend in introductory physics labs, there is little consensus on instructional goals and accepted diagnostic assessments for these labs. In response to these issues, we have…
Virtual Laboratories (V Labs) have in the recent past become part and parcel of remote teaching in practical hands-on approaches, particularly in Cybersecurity distance courses. Their potential is meant to assist learners with hands-on…
"Self-diagnosis tasks" aim at fostering diagnostic behavior by explicitly requiring students to present diagnosis as part of the activity of reviewing their problem solutions. We have been investigating the extent to which introductory…
We describe a course designed to help future educators build an integrated understanding of the different elements of physics education research (PER), including: research into student learning, content knowledge from the perspective of how…
Capitalizing on the enthusiasm about space science in the general public, our goal as an interdisciplinary group of scholars is to design and teach a new team-taught interdisciplinary course, "Philosophy and Science of Space Exploration…
This paper reviews research results obtained from Einsteinian physics programs run by different instructors with Years 6, 9, 10 and 11 students using the models and analogies described in Parts 1 and 2. The research aimed to determine…
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…
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.…
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…
Quantum mechanics can seem like a departure from everyday experience of the physical world, but constructivist theories assert that learners build new ideas from their existing ones. To explore how students can navigate this tension, we…
This exploratory study examines the classroom deployment of aiPlato, an AI-enabled homework platform, in a large introductory physics course at the University of Texas at Arlington. Designed to support open-ended problem solving, aiPlato…
Preparing future physics teachers for the demanding nature of their profession is an important and complex endeavor. Teacher education systems must provide a structure for the coherent professional development of prospective teachers.…
In introductory physics laboratory instruction, students often expect to confirm or demonstrate textbook physics concepts (Wilcox & Lewandowski, 2017; Hu & Zwickl, 2017; Hu & Zwickl, 2018). This expectation is largely undesirable: labs that…