Related papers: Inequities and misaligned expectations in PhD stud…
The percentage of women receiving bachelors degrees in physics in the U.S. lags well behind that of men, and women leave the major at higher rates. Achieving equity in physics will mean that women stay in physics at the same rates as men,…
Help-seeking is a critical way for students to learn new concepts, acquire new skills, and get unstuck when problem-solving in their computing courses. The recent proliferation of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, offers students a new…
In recent years scholars have built maps of science by connecting the academic fields that cite each other, are cited together, or that cite a similar literature. But since scholars cannot always publish in the fields they cite, or that…
An analysis of barriers to women's participation in physics education is presented. It is expected that in undergraduate physics the most common situation for a women is that she is cisgender and one of a numerical minority in the…
Academic publishing is the principal medium of documenting and disseminating scientific discoveries. At the heart of its daily operations are the editorial boards. Despite their activities and recruitment often being opaque to outside…
The evolution of science education is a dynamic process driven by advances in pedagogy, technology, and especially, our understanding of how students learn. Educators are exploring innovative teaching and learning methodologies such as…
Changing institutions is an integral part of an academic life. Yet little is known about the mobility patterns of scientists at an institutional level and how these career choices affect scientific outcomes. Here, we examine over 420,000…
Student attitudes and approaches to problem solving can impact how well they learn physics. Prior research in the US using a validated Attitude and Approaches to Problem Solving (AAPS) survey suggests that there are major differences…
We detail some lessons learned while designing and testing a decision-theoretic advising support tool for undergraduates at a large state university. Between 2009 and 2011 we conducted two surveys of over 500 students in multiple majors and…
Understanding which student support strategies mitigate dropout and improve student retention is an important part of modern higher educational research. One of the largest challenges institutions of higher learning currently face is the…
A method is described to empower students to efficiently perform general and literature searches using online resources. The method was tested on undergraduate and graduate students with varying backgrounds with scientific literature.…
The US professional astronomy and astrophysics fields are not representative of the diversity of people in the nation. For example, 2017 AIP reports show that in 2014, women made up only about 20 percent of the faculty in astronomy and…
In a previous study, students' self-expressed learning orientations towards an exercise centered on self-monitoring one's ability to solve a pre-lab physics problem were identified from a post-test feedback survey given to an introductory…
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…
This study investigates how faculty acquire contextual information about students, examining mechanisms and motivations used when sharing their identity to facilitate empathy. Empathy is "the ability and tendency to share and understand…
As educators we often ask our physics students to work in groups---on tutorials, during in-class discussions, and on homework, projects, or exams. Researchers have documented the benefits of group work for students' conceptual mastery and…
Despite significant improvements over the last few generations, the discipline of mathematics still counts a disproportionately small number of women among its practitioners. These women are underrepresented as conference speakers, even…
Letters of recommendation are a common tool used in graduate admissions. Most admissions systems require three letters for each applicant, burdening both letter writers and admissions committees with a heavy work load that may not be time…
We investigated the intersectional nature of race/racism and gender/sexism in broad scale inequities in physics student learning using a critical quantitative intersectionality. To provide transparency and create a nuanced picture of…
Empirical data on early network history are rare. Students beginning their studies at a university with no or few prior connections to each other offer a unique opportunity to investigate the formation and early development of social…