Related papers: Helping students become proficient problem solvers…
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…
Mathematical reasoning with algebraic and graphical representations is essential for success in physics courses. Many problems require students to fluently move between algebraic and graphical representations. We developed a freely…
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…
The impact of inquiry-based instruction on the improvement of content knowledge of electricity and wave properties in two studies was the subject of this investigation. Groups of pre-college and undergraduate students performed a series of…
With the adoption of instructional laboratories (labs) that require students to make their own decisions, there is a need to better understand students' activities as they make sense of their data and decide how to proceed. In particular,…
The teaching of statistics in higher education in the UK is still largely lecture-based. This is despite recommendations such as those given by the American Statistical Association's GAISE report that more emphasis should be placed on…
Single particle models are sufficient for many topics in introductory physics courses, but become misleading when applied to situations involving changes in internal energy. This paper merges two parallel attempts to reform the teaching of…
Contribution: We demonstrate that it is feasible to include field specific problems in introductory mathematics courses to motivate engineering students. This is done in a way that still allows large parts of the course to be common to all…
Introductory algebra-based physics courses frequently feature multiple student major populations in the same course section, however, different majors' requirements may impact students' motivations towards different aspects of the course…
As part of a larger study to understand instructors' considerations regarding the learning and teaching of problem solving in an introductory physics course, we investigated beliefs of first-year graduate teaching assistants (TAs) regarding…
Pencasts are videos of problem solving with narration by the problem solver. Pedagogically, students can create pencasts to illustrate their own problem solving to the instructor or to their peers. Pencasts have implications for teaching at…
Teaching assistants (TAs) are often responsible for grading in introductory physics courses at large research universities. Their grading practices can shape students' approaches to problem solving and learning. Physics education research…
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…
I am a second-year cognitive science major, and as a student who has completed my physical science distribution requirements, I will likely never again encounter Gauss's law. So why do I feel that the time and effort I devoted to solving…
Studying for physics exams can be difficult and stressful, especially during a student's introductory year in physics. For students who do not plan to major in physics, the desire to do well is based less on understanding concepts and more…
Background: Programming skills are advantageous to navigate today's society, so it is important to teach them to students. However, failure rates for programming courses are high, and especially students who fall behind early in…
Waves play an essential role in many aspects of plasma science, such as plasma manipulation and diagnostics. Due to the complexity of the governing equations, approximate models are often necessary to describe wave dynamics. In this…
"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…
Computation is becoming an increasingly important part of physics education. However, there are currently few theories of learning that can be used to help explain and predict the unique challenges and affordances associated with…
We report on a large-scale study of student learning of quantum tunneling in 4 traditional and 4 transformed modern physics courses. In the transformed courses, which were designed to address student difficulties found in previous research,…