Related papers: Underprepared for Physics: Reframing the narrative…
Educators and policy-makers have advocated for reform of undergraduate biology education, calling for greater integration of mathematics and physics in the biology curriculum. While these calls reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary…
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…
Physics lab courses are integral parts of an undergraduate physics education, and offer a variety of opportunities for learning. Many of these opportunities center around a common learning goal in introductory physics lab courses:…
In this article, we reflect upon our positive experiences incorporating or working on extra credit projects in algebra-based introductory physics that asked students to connect physics with humanities, social sciences, and everyday life. We…
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…
The flipped classroom technique has recently been a focus of attention for many math instructors and pedagogical researchers. Although research on the subject has greatly increased in recent years, it is still debated whether the flipped…
In previous work we analyzed databases for 95 classes to show that the percent grade scale was correlated with a much higher student fail rate than the 4.0 grade scale. This paper builds on this work and investigates equity gaps occurring…
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…
Writing and argumentation are critical to both professional physics and physics education. However, the skill of making an extended argument in writing is often overlooked in physics classrooms, apart from certain practices like lab…
In their study of physics beyond the first year of University -- termed upper-division in the US, many of students' primary learning opportunities come from working long, complex back-of-the-book style problems, and from trying to develop…
Identifying the relevant physics principles is a central component of problem solving. A major goal of most introductory physics courses is to help students discern the deep similarities between problems based upon the physics principles so…
National studies conducted over many years show that, while most Americans are interested in science and support federal funding of scientific research, the scientific literacy of the public is very low. Why this situation exists and who is…
Computation is a central aspect of modern science and engineering work, and yet, computational instruction has yet to fully pervade university STEM curricula. In physics, we have begun to integrate computation into our courses in a variety…
The rapid adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in higher education is transforming how students engage with undergraduate mathematics, raising concerns about learning and assessment validity. This study examines the…
A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The…
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…
We present an adoption-ready instructional module for introducing quantum superposition in a two-state system. The package combines a five-activity classroom sequence with grading-ready assessment materials organized around six conceptual…
To develop an increase in societal interest in the fundamental sciences of particle physics and particularly for maintaining the support structures needed to succeed in experiments that take several decades to develop and complete, requires…
Researchers have pinpointed recognition from others as one of the most important dimensions of students' science and engineering identity. Studies, however, have found gender biases in students' recognition of their peers, with inconsistent…
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…