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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…
As students increasingly rely on large language models, hallucinations pose a growing threat to learning. To mitigate this, AI literacy must expand beyond prompt engineering to address how students should detect and respond to LLM…
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…
In this article we describe special type of mathematical problems that may help develop teaching methods that motivate students to explore patterns, formulate conjectures and find solutions without only memorizing formulas and procedures.…
The convergence rate and final performance of common deep learning models have significantly benefited from heuristics such as learning rate schedules, knowledge distillation, skip connections, and normalization layers. In the absence of…
Previous research has found that introductory physics students perform far better on numeric problems than on otherwise equivalent symbolic problems. This paper describes a framework to explain these differences developed by analyzing…
Machine learning systems impact many stakeholders and groups of users, often disparately. Prior studies have reconciled conflicting user preferences by aggregating a high volume of manually labeled pairwise comparisons, but this technique…
Highly successful students, as measured by grades and by scores on the Force Concept Inventory, still struggle with fundamental concepts in mathematics and physics. These difficulties, which turn physics into parrot learning and include…
Mathematical reasoning---a core ability within human intelligence---presents some unique challenges as a domain: we do not come to understand and solve mathematical problems primarily on the back of experience and evidence, but on the basis…
Development of conceptual multiple-choice tests related to a particular physics topic is important for designing research-based learning tools to reduce the difficulties. We explore the difficulties that the advanced undergraduate and…
With the continuous advancement of reasoning abilities in Large Language Models (LLMs), their application to scientific reasoning tasks has gained significant research attention. Current research primarily emphasizes boosting LLMs'…
In order to describe natural phenomena, science develops sophisticated models that use mathematical and formal languages which seem, and often are, very far from common experience. When a phenomenon is not accessible to our senses, its…
We investigated the effects of student-generated problems on exams. The process was gradual with some training throughout the semester. Initial results were highly positive with the students involved performing significantly better, and…
Which social decisions are influenced by intuitive processes? Which by deliberative processes? The dual-process approach to human sociality has emerged in the last decades as a vibrant and exciting area of research. Yet, a perspective that…
Doing mathematics implies three levels of manipulation: manipulating the abstract, manipulating symbols and manipulating logic. Teaching mathematics therefore involves the teacher proposing situations in which pupils can explore a small…
In many ways, the American learning system is unique in its reliance on testing using multiple-choice questions. Learning in physics, as well as in any other subject, is a context-dependent process. In this paper, I consider a broader…
The increasing complexity of abstract concepts in physics education and the low level of students critical thinking skills demand innovative instructional strategies aligned with 21st century competencies. This study aims to analyze…
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…
Assessments are usually thought of as ways for instructors to get information from students. In this work, we flip this perspective and explore how assessments communicate information to students. Specifically, we consider how assessments…
Recent studies reveal that experienced data practitioners often draw sketches to facilitate communication around privacy design concepts. However, there is limited understanding of how we can help novice students develop such communication…