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Most students struggle when faced with complex and ill-structured tasks because the strategies taught in schools and universities simply require finding and applying the correct formulae or strategy to answer well-structured, algorithmic…
Design skills are increasingly recognized as a core competency for software professionals. Unfortunately, these skills are difficult to teach because design requires freedom and open-ended thinking, but new designers require a structured…
A hybrid teaching approach that relied on combining Project Based Learning with Team Based Learning was trialled in an engineering module during the past five years. Our motivation was to expose students to real-world authentic engineering…
How students utilize immediate tutoring feedback in programming education depends on various factors. Among them are the feedback quality, but also students' engagement, i.e., their perception, interpretation, and use of feedback. However,…
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…
Computation is intertwined with essentially all aspects of physics research and is invaluable for physicists' careers. Despite its disciplinary importance, integration of computation into physics education remains a challenge and, moreover,…
A variety of activities are commonly used in college physics courses including lab, tutorials, and studio curricula. Instructors must choose among using research-based activities, designing their own activities or modifying existing…
In many science and engineering settings, system dynamics are characterized by governing PDEs, and a major challenge is to solve inverse problems (IPs) where unknown PDE parameters are inferred based on observational data gathered under…
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'…
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…
Developing expertise in physics requires appropriate integration and assimilation of physics and mathematics. Instructors and students often describe physics courses in terms of their emphasis on conceptual and quantitative problem-solving.…
We describe the development of a course of quantum mechanics for secondary school designed to address the challenges related to the revision of classical knowledge, to the building of a well-organized knowledge structure on the discipline,…
Computational thinking in physics has many different forms, definitions, and implementations depending on the level of physics, or the institution it is presented in. In order to better integrate computational thinking in introductory…
Computational thinking has been a recent focus of education research within the sciences. However, there is a dearth of scholarly literature on how best to teach and to assess this topic, especially in disciplinary science courses. Physics…
The amount of published research in Physics Education Research (PER) shows, on one hand, an increasing interest in the design and development of high performance physics teaching strategies, and, on the other hand, it tries to understand…
Dynamics problem solving is highly specific to the problem at hand and to develop the general mind framework to become an effective problem solver requires ingenuity and creativity on top of a solid grounding on theoretical and conceptual…
Understanding elementary mechanisms behind solid-state phase transformations and reactions is the key to optimizing desired functional properties of many technologically relevant materials. Recent advances in scanning transmission electron…
The large number of published articles in physics journals under the title "Comments on ..." and "Reply to ..." is indicative that the conceptual understanding of physical phenomena is very elusive and hard to grasp even to experts, but it…
Effective physics learning, especially in complex topics, requires balancing mathematical formalism with conceptual understanding. Conceptual problem-solving involves connecting math to physical reality, and using an epistemological…
A R&D project has been recently launched to investigate Geant4 architectural design in view of addressing new experimental issues in HEP and other related physics disciplines. In the context of this project the use of generic programming…