Related papers: Improving the science process skills of physics ed…

There are diverse teaching methodologies to promote both collaborative and individual work in undergraduate physics courses. However, few educational studies seek to understand how students learn and apply new knowledge through open-ended…

A two-stage collaborative exam is one in which students first complete the exam individually, and then complete the same or similar exam in collaborative groups immediately afterward. To quantify the learning effect from the group component…

Science communication skills are considered essential learning objectives for undergraduate physics students. However, high enrollment and limited class resources present significant barriers to providing students ample opportunities to…

The objective of our study is to ascertain the present learning behaviors, driving forces, and assessment techniques as perceived by first-year students, and to examine them through the lens of the most recent developments (pandemic, shift…

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…

The article deals with the problem of intellectual development of students in learning of physics by means of computer simulation. The main objectives of teaching computer simulation in learning of physics is the general outlook…

In this paper we investigate the extent to which students' problem-solving behaviors change as a result of working on multi-faceted, context-rich problems. During the semester, groups of two to three students work on several problems that…

This paper introduces a testable model for physics-specific student engagement at the onset of task processing in response to a task-specific motivational stimulus. Empirical research provides evidence that contextual embedding of a task…

Recent years have seen a growing interest in modernizing physics and science curricula around the world. While many science educators and curriculum developers design instructional resources to successfully introduce topics of Einsteinian…

Pre-class reading assignments help prepare students for active classes by providing a first exposure to the terms and concepts to be used during class. We investigate if the use of inquiry-oriented PhET-based activities in conjunction with…

We present a method to study engagement level uniformity in a class of students. We validate our method by comparing two semesters taught using different methods in a physics and mathematics course. The first semester used conventional…

Despite the precision and adaptiveness of generative AI (GAI)-powered feedback provided to students, existing practice and literature might ignore how usage patterns impact student learning. This study examines the heterogeneous effects of…

Students' answers to tasks provide a valuable source of information in teaching as they result from applying cognitive processes to a learning content addressed in the task. Due to steadily increasing course sizes, analyzing student answers…

Improving students' understanding of the nature of experimental physics is often an explicit or implicit goal of undergraduate laboratory physics courses. However, lab activities in traditional lab courses are typically characterized by…

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…

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…

Several studies indicate that attracting students to research careers requires to engage them from early undergraduate years. Following this paradigm, our Engineering School has developed an undergraduate research program that allows…

Systematic observations of student gestures can not only fill in gaps in students' verbal expressions, but can also offer valuable information about student ideas, including their source, their novelty to the speaker, and their construction…

The Learning Assistant (LA) model supports instructors in implementing research-based teaching practices in their own courses. In the LA model, undergraduate students are hired to help facilitate research-based collaborative-learning…

Proof Blocks is a software tool that provides students with a scaffolded proof-writing experience, allowing them to drag and drop prewritten proof lines into the correct order instead of starting from scratch. In this paper we describe a…