Related papers: Modern physics courses: Understanding the content …
We address four main areas in which graduate quantum mechanics education can be improved: course content, textbook, teaching methods, and assessment tools. We report on a three year longitudinal study at the Colorado School of Mines using…
These notes are an elaboration on: (i) a short course that I gave at the IPhT-Saclay in May-June 2012; (ii) a previous letter on reversibility in quantum mechanics. They present an introductory, but hopefully coherent, view of the main…
Assessing student learning is a cornerstone of educational practice. Standardized assessments have played a significant role in the development of instruction, curricula, and educational spaces in college physics. However, the use of these…
University students taking introductory physics are generally successful executing mathematical procedures in context, but often struggle with the use of mathematical concepts for sense making. Physics instructors note that their students…
We present a conceptually clear introduction to quantum theory, deriving the theory from scratch from the point of view of quantum information. Different subsets of these lectures were taught to a wide variety of audiences, including…
Psychologists have long known that an expert in a field not only knows significantly more individual facts/skills than a novice but also has these facts/skills organized into a mental hierarchy that links the individual facts (at the bottom…
The ongoing progress in quantum theory emphasizes the crucial role of the very basic principles of quantum theory. However, this is not properly followed in teaching quantum mechanics on the graduate and undergraduate levels of physics…
Cosmology education has become an integral part of modern physics courses. Directed by National Curricula, major UK examination boards have developed syllabi that contain explicit statements about the model of the Big Bang and the strong…
Computation is a central aspect of 21st century physics practice; it is used to model complicated systems, to simulate impossible experiments, and to analyze mountains of data. Physics departments and their faculty are increasingly…
Over the past year and a half we have developed an innovative approach to the teaching of `Physical Science', a general education course typically found in the curricula of nearly every college and university. The new approach uses popular…
Timescales spanning 24 orders of magnitude smaller than one second can be studied experimentally, and each range is packed with different physical phenomena. This rich range of timescales offers a great context for an innovative…
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates that U.S. institutions of higher education provide "reasonable accommodations" to students with disabilities to ensure equal educational opportunities. However, despite the key role of…
English abstract: In the "Intuitive Quantum Physics" course, we use graphical interpretations of mathematical equations and qualitative reasoning to develop and teach a simplified model of quantum physics. Our course contains three units:…
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…
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…
Quantum Information Science and Engineering (QISE) is rapidly gaining interest from those within many disciplines and higher education needs to adapt to the changing landscape. Although QISE education still has a strong presence and roots…
Instruction in quantum mechanics is becoming increasingly important as the field is not only a key part of modern physics research, but is also important for emerging technologies. However, many students regard quantum mechanics as a…
The Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Survey (QMCS) is a 12-question survey of students' conceptual understanding of quantum mechanics. It is intended to be used to measure the relative effectiveness of different instructional methods in modern…
At the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, the majority of secondary instruction in the United States transitioned to an online environment. In many parts of the country, online schooling continued for upwards of two years. Many experts have…
A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have…