Related papers: Multi-institutional assessment of Peer Instruction…
Imitation learning techniques have been shown to be highly effective in real-world control scenarios, such as robotics. However, these approaches not only suffer from compounding error issues but also require human experts to provide…
Physics Education Research (PER) has made significant progress in developing knowledge about teaching and learning as well as effective instructional strategies based on this knowledge. Disseminating knowledge and strategies to other…
Collaboration with peers both inside and outside the classroom can be an invaluable tool for helping students learn physics. We investigated the impact of peer collaboration on learning physics by examining the characteristics of women and…
The gap between theory and practice is well-documented in educational research. Physics teachers' willingness to apply research findings in practice may be influenced by a sceptical attitude towards science education research. This study…
Questions of participant understanding of the nature of an activity have been addressed in anthropology and sociolinguistics with the concepts of frames and framing. For example, a student may frame a learning activity as an opportunity for…
We present two programs that address needs to better prepare graduate students for their roles as professional physicists, particularly in the areas of teaching and education research. The two programs, Preparing Future Physicists (PFP) and…
Interactive reinforcement learning has shown promise in learning complex robotic tasks. However, the process can be human-intensive due to the requirement of a large amount of interactive feedback. This paper presents a new method that uses…
During the last ten years advances in open-source digital technology, used especially by data science, led to very accessible ways how to obtain, store, process, analyze or share data in almost every human activity. Data science tools bring…
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…
Peer influence on effort devoted to some activity is often studied when effort is unobserved, and the researcher instead observes an outcome that combines effort with other shocks. For instance, in education, achievement measures such as…
This paper examines the educational impact of the implementation of "Changes in Energy and Momentum" from the Tutorials in Introductory Physics in five different instructional settings. These settings include (1) a completely computer-based…
Interactive reinforcement learning proposes the use of externally-sourced information in order to speed up the learning process. When interacting with a learner agent, humans may provide either evaluative or informative advice. Prior…
Iterative peer grading activities may keep students engaged during in-class project presentations. Effective methods for collecting and aggregating peer assessment data are essential. Students tend to grade projects favorably. So, while…
Students' curiosity often seems nearly nonexistent in a lecture setting; we discuss a variety of possible reasons for this, but it is the instructor who typically poses questions while only a few students, usually the better ones, respond.…
The role of student experiences in physics beyond the classroom which support their development has been the subject of exciting research in recent years. Results, typically from small studies at single institutions, have illustrated that…
The use of new technologies in higher education has surprisingly emphasized students' tendency to adopt a passive behavior in class. Participation and interaction of students are essential to improve academic results. This paper describes…
Structured Peer Learning (SPL) is a form of peer-based supplemental instruction that focuses on mentoring, guidance, and development of technical, communication, and social skills in both the students receiving assistance and the students…
Physics Playground is an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) application designed for educational purposes, featuring a virtual laboratory where users interact with various physics phenomena through guided experiments. This study aims to…
We describe a course designed to help future educators build an integrated understanding of the different elements of physics education research (PER), including: research into student learning, content knowledge from the perspective of how…
Through in-class observations of teaching assistants (TAs) and students in the lab sections of a large introductory physics course, we study which TA behaviors can be used to predict student engagement and, in turn, how this engagement…