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Equations are about more than computing physical quantities or constructing formal models; they are also about understanding. The conceptual systems physicists use to think about nature are made from many different resources, formal and…
Societal stereotypes and biases pertaining to who belongs in physics and who can excel in physics can impact motivational beliefs, e.g., of women and racial and ethnic minority students in physics courses. This study investigates how the…
Research has shown that both high school and university students' reasoning patterns regarding direct current resistive electric circuits often differ from the currently accepted explanations. At present, there are no standard diagnostic…
This article discusses the process of creating, implementing and experiencing Flipped Learning in a Multivariable Calculus course for second year engineering students. We describe the construction of the teaching material, consisting of…
Test anxiety is beginning to be recognized as a significant factor affecting student performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, potentially contributing to gender inequity within these fields.…
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…
We investigated the difficulties that physics students in upper-level undergraduate quantum mechanics and graduate students after quantum and statistical mechanics core courses have with the Fermi energy, the Fermi-Dirac distribution and…
The research presented in this thesis was motivated by the need to improve introductory physics courses. Introductory physics courses are generally the first courses in which students learn to create models to solve complex problems.…
Physics Education Research (PER) practitioners have engaged in substantial curriculum development and dissemination work in recent years. Yet, it appears that this work has had minimal influence on the fundamental teaching practices of…
We present a study of student understanding of energy in quantum mechanical tunneling and barrier penetration. This paper will focus on student responses to two questions that were part of a test given in class to two modern physics classes…
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…
We have investigated the difference in persistence between male and female students while taking undergraduatephysics courses. To quantify the persistence of a certain group of students, we have defined 'persistence index' as the inverseof…
Studies examining gender differences in introductory physics show a consensus when it comes to a gender gap on conceptual assessments; however, the story is not as clear when it comes to differences in gendered performance on exams. This…
In this meta-analysis, we synthesize the results of 24 studies using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) and the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX) to answer several questions: (1) How does physics…
Students with disabilities are enrolling in postsecondary education in increasing numbers and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) at steady rates since the early 1990s. Specifically, in 2014, the National Center on…
In this classroom-based action-research project, I compared the following two approaches to check their effectiveness in helping students overcome physics misconceptions: Inducing cognitive dissonance or gradually building on students'…
We discuss the development of a research-based conceptual multiple-choice survey related to magnetism. We also discuss the use of the survey to investigate gender differences in students' difficulties with concepts related to magnetism. We…
An active learning physics course (treatment) was re-organized in an attempt to increase students' problem solving abilities. This re-organized course covered all of the relevant concepts in the first 6 weeks with the final 4 weeks spent 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…
Partial differential equations (PDEs) govern nearly every physical process in science and engineering, yet solving them at scale remains prohibitively expensive. Generative AI has transformed language, vision, and protein science, but…