Related papers: Why and How to Implement Worked Examples in Upper …
We describe the development of a junior-senior level course for Physics majors designed to teach Mathematica skills in support of their undergraduate coursework, but also to introduce students to modern research level results. Standard…
We present a study of active learning pedagogies in an upper division physics course. This work was guided by the principle of deliberate practice for the development of expertise, and this principle was used in the design of the materials…
Many students in upper-division physics courses struggle with the mathematically sophisticated tools and techniques that are required for advanced physics content. We have developed an analytical framework to assist instructors and…
The modeling theory of instruction is widely applied and highly successful in high-school instruction, and seldom in university physics. One reason is lack of familiarity with models in the physics classroom. Ongoing curriculum development…
We discuss several ways of illustrating fundamental concepts in statistical and thermal physics by considering various models and algorithms. We emphasize the importance of replacing students' incomplete mental images by models that are…
Implementing a laboratory activity involves a complex interplay among learning goals, available resources, feedback about the existing course, best practices for teaching, and an overall philosophy about teaching labs. Building on our…
Most physical systems are modelled by an ordinary or a partial differential equation, like the n-body problem in celestial mechanics. In some cases, for example when studying the long term behaviour of the solar system or for complex…
Deep learning has achieved astonishing results on many tasks with large amounts of data and generalization within the proximity of training data. For many important real-world applications, these requirements are unfeasible and additional…
Learning by examples, which learns to solve a new problem by looking into how similar problems are solved, is an effective learning method in human learning. When a student learns a new topic, he/she finds out exemplar topics that are…
This article addresses the logistics of implementing projects in an undergraduate mathematics class and is intended both for new instructors and for instructors who have had negative experiences implementing projects in the past. Project…
We study the problem of building an efficient learning system. Efficient learning processes information in the least time, i.e., building a system that reaches a desired error threshold with the least number of observations. Building upon…
Developing expert-like problem-solving skills is a central goal of undergraduate physics education. In this study, we investigate the impact of teaching explicit problem-solving frameworks, combined with deliberate practice, on students'…
A close look at students' written work on examinations offers a wealth of information about their performance, their knowledge of the subject, their strengths, weaknesses and misconceptions, and their overall level of mathematical skills…
Humans can leverage hierarchical structures to split a task into sub-tasks and solve problems efficiently. Both imitation and reinforcement learning or a combination of them with hierarchical structures have been proven to be an efficient…
We review and extend existing frameworks on modeling to develop a new framework that describes model-based reasoning in upper-division physics labs. Constructing and using models are core scientific practices that have gained significant…
The study guide (textbook) is part of a set of materials designed to support high-quality practical training in physics. It includes a collection of tasks for organizing both in-class and independent work. The guide serves as a foundation…
We present the results of an experience of teaching updating dispensed to Italian high-school physics teachers to promote the application of the Cooperative Problem Solving method as an useful strategy to improve physics learning at…
Education is a goal-oriented field. But if we want to treat education scientifically so we can accumulate, evaluate, and refine what we learn, then we must develop a theoretical framework that is strongly rooted in objective observations…
We investigated physics students' learning experience and behaviour in a second-year laboratory by analyzing transcribed audio recordings of laboratory sessions. One student group was given both a problem and procedure and asked to analyze…
Upper-division physics students spend much of their time solving problems. In addition to their basic skills and background, their epistemic framing can form an important part of their ability to learn physics from these problems.…