Related papers: Comparing introductory and beyond-introductory stu…
Uncertainty is an important and fundamental concept in physics education. Students are often first exposed to uncertainty in introductory labs, expand their knowledge across lab courses, and then are introduced to quantum mechanical…
Proficiency with calculating, reporting, and understanding measurement uncertainty is a nationally recognized learning outcome for undergraduate physics lab courses. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is a research-based assessment…
The aim of this study is to investigate the decisions and reasoning of undergraduate students when choosing simple measurement instruments in an introductory physics laboratory course. For this study, we have developed a questionnaire and…
Measurement uncertainty and experimental error are important concepts taught in undergraduate physics laboratories. Although student ideas about error and uncertainty in introductory classical mechanics lab experiments have been studied…
Physics lab courses are an essential part of the physics undergraduate curriculum. Learning goals for these classes often include the ability to interpret measurements and uncertainties. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is an…
Measurement uncertainty plays a critical role in the process of experimental physics. It is useful to be able to assess student proficiency around the topic to iteratively improve instruction and student learning. For the topic of…
Physics lab courses are integral parts of an undergraduate physics education, and offer a variety of opportunities for learning. Many of these opportunities center around a common learning goal in introductory physics lab courses:…
Knowledge distillation transfers behavior from a teacher to a student model, but the process is inherently stochastic: teacher outputs, student training, and student inference can all be random. Collapsing these uncertainties to a single…
Measurement uncertainty is an important topic in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Previous research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty has focused primarily on introductory-level students' procedural…
Measurement uncertainty is a critical feature of experimental research in the physical sciences, and the concepts and practices surrounding measurement uncertainty are important components of physics lab courses. However, there has not been…
Educators must make decisions about learner expectations and skills on which to focus when it comes to laboratory activities. There are various approaches but the general pattern is to encourage students to measure ordered pairs, plot a…
These lectures deal with the problem of inductive inference, that is, the problem of reasoning under conditions of incomplete information. Is there a general method for handling uncertainty? Or, at least, are there rules that could in…
Over the last five years, the McGill University Office of Science Education (OSE) has partnered with faculty members from the Department of Physics to form an education research group with the aim of charting the progression of student…
Judging the significance and reproducibility of quantitative research requires a good understanding of relevant uncertainties, but it is often unclear how well these have been evaluated and what they imply. Reported scientific uncertainties…
Student learning in upper division thermal physics has not been studied to the same extent as in other courses like electromagnetism and quantum mechanics. Studies addressing reasoning and learning at the graduate level are even more…
Interpreting experimental data in high school experiments can be a difficult task for students, especially when there is large variation in the data. At the same time, calculating the standard deviation poses a challenge for students. In…
Modelling uncertainty in Machine Learning models is essential for achieving safe and reliable predictions. Most research on uncertainty focuses on output uncertainty (predictions), but minimal attention is paid to uncertainty at inputs. We…
Students' attitudes and approaches to problem solving in physics can profoundly influence their motivation to learn and development of expertise. We developed and validated an Attitudes and Approaches to Problem Solving survey by expanding…
Many institutions are changing the focus of their introductory physics labs from verifying physics content towards teaching students about the skills and nature of science. As instruction shifts, so too will the ways students approach and…
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…