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While it is well known which curricular practices can improve student performance on measures of conceptual understanding, the sustaining of these practices and the role of faculty members in implementing these practices are less well…
Explainer videos are increasingly used to support science learning. While prior research has demonstrated their potential, studies have also identified limitations - particularly their tendency to foster an illusion of understanding, where…
"Self-diagnosis tasks" aim at fostering diagnostic behavior by explicitly requiring students to present diagnosis as part of the activity of reviewing their problem solutions. We have been investigating the extent to which introductory…
Generative AI tools, such as AI-generated hints, are increasingly integrated into programming education to offer timely, personalized support. However, little is known about how to effectively leverage these hints while ensuring autonomous…
The set of polarizing force-identification (PFI) questions in the FCI consists of six items all basically asking only one question: the set of forces acting on a given body. Although it may sound trivial, these questions are among the most…
Boundary conditions (BCs) are considered as an important topic that advanced physics under- graduates are expected to understand and apply. We report findings from an investigation of student difficulties using boundary conditions (BCs) in…
In recent years, computing has become an important part of the way we teach and learn physics. Teachers, both at high school and college levels, now use computational activities in many of their courses. Physics departments are offering…
We describe an extracurricular learning path on waves focused on energy transfer. The advantages of introducing mechanical waves by using the Shive wave machine and laboratory activities are presented. Laboratories are realized by inquiry,…
Physics and physics education in the United States suffer from severe (and, in some cases, worsening) underrepresentation of Black, Latina/o, and Native people of all genders and women of all races and ethnicities. This underrepresentation…
We have designed an introductory laboratory course that engaged first-year undergraduate students in two complementary types of iteration: (1) iterative improvement of experiments through cycles of modeling systems, designing experiments,…
One of the biggest hurdles robotics faces is the facet of sophisticated and hard-to-engineer behaviors. Reinforcement learning offers a set of tools, and a framework to address this problem. In parallel, the misgivings of robotics offer a…
Investigations related to expertise in problem solving and ability to transfer learning from one context to another are important for developing strategies to help students perform more expert-like tasks. Here we analyze written responses…
Supervised fine-tuning enhances the problem-solving abilities of language models across various mathematical reasoning tasks. To maximize such benefits, existing research focuses on broadening the training set with various data augmentation…
Even though there has been a tremendous amount of research done in how to help students learn physics, students are still coming away missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: why bother with physics? Students learn fundamental laws and how to…
Homework in introductory physics represents an important part of a student's learning experience; therefore choosing the manner in which homework is presented merits investigation. We performed three rounds of clinical trials comparing the…
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…
This study presents a review of the current state of research on teaching quantum mechanics in secondary and lower undergraduate education. A conceptual approach to quantum mechanics is being implemented in more and more introductory…
Identifying and understanding student difficulties with physics content in a wide variety of topical areas is an active research area within the PER community. In many cases, physics topics appear multiple times in different contexts across…
Too often, physics students are beset by feelings of failure and isolation rather than experiencing the creative joys of discovery that physics has to offer. This dissertation research was founded on the desire of a teacher to make physics…
In recent years there has been growing evidence that even after teaching designed to address the learning difficulties dictated by literature, many physics learners fail to create the proper reasoning chains that connect the fundamental…