Related papers: Attributing equity gaps to course structure in int…
We have investigated the difference in persistence between male and female students while taking undergraduatephysics courses. To quantify the persistence of a certain group of students, we have defined 'persistence index' as the inverseof…
Traditional high-stakes summative assessments--timed, in-class exams accounting for a large percentage of the term's overall grade--have often received criticism from the educational community. Such assessments tend to prize a particular…
In this paper several examples of gaps (lacunes) between dimensions of maximal and submaximal symmetric models are considered, which include investigation of number of independent linear and quadratic integrals of metrics and counting the…
Efforts to promote equity and inclusion using evidence-based approaches are vital to correct long-standing societal inequities that have disadvantaged women and discouraged them from pursuing studies, e.g., in many STEM disciplines. We use…
Decision to participate in education depends on the circumstances individual inherits and on the returns to education she expects as well. If one person from any socio-economically disadvantaged social group inherits poor circumstances…
Classification models are expected to perform equally well for different classes, yet in practice, there are often large gaps in their performance. This issue of class bias is widely studied in cases of datasets with sample imbalance, but…
Very little is known about how the nature of expertise in introductory and advanced courses compares in knowledge-rich domains such as physics. We develop a framework to compare the similarities and differences between learning and patterns…
Increasingly, the physics community is attending to issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion, both in language and action. We are more publicly recognizing our individual responsibilities as physicists to address social injustice and…
Taking notes during lectures is one of the required skills, among many others, that students need (i) to master the topic covered in the lecture, (ii) to actively engage in the learning process with minimal to no distractions, (iii) to…
There is consistent and growing evidence that physics instruction disproportionately harms female students' self-efficacy, their beliefs about their ability to learn and do physics. This harm is problematic because self-efficacy supports…
Asking questions during class time is one form of participation not commonly employed by members of underrepresented groups in large enrollment college classrooms, even though the form of participation is highly conducive to student…
Many instructors choose to assess their students using open-ended written exam items that require students to show their understanding of physics by solving a problem and/or explaining a concept. Grading these items is fairly time…
Automated gender classification has important applications in many domains, such as demographic research, law enforcement, online advertising, as well as human-computer interaction. Recent research has questioned the fairness of this…
We discuss the categorization of 20 quantum mechanics problems by physics professors and undergraduate students from two honors-level quantum mechanics courses. Professors and students were asked to categorize the problems based upon…
In an academic landscape where female physicists are still strongly underrepresented, underlying causes like unconscious gender bias deserve specific attention. Members of academia are often not aware of their intrinsic, hence unconscious,…
Students with disabilities are enrolling in postsecondary education in increasing numbers and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at steady rates since the early 1990s. Specifically, in 2014, the National Center on…
Instructional physics labs are critical junctures for many STEM majors to develop an understanding of experimentation in the sciences. Students can acquire useful experimental skills and grow their identities as scientists. However, many…
The lack of diversity in physics and astronomy PhD programmes is well known but has not improved despite decades of efforts. PhD bridge programmes provide an asset-based model to help overcome the societal and disciplinary obstacles to…
Physics labs provide a unique opportunity for students to grow their physics identity and science identity in general since they provide students with opportunity to tinker with experiments and analyze data in a low-stakes environment.…
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…