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Over the last three decades, various didactic proposals have been published in an attempt to connect theory and research findings with the design of Teaching-Learning Sequences (TLS) in various contexts. Many studies have analysed the…
The main task of an introductory laboratory course is to foster students' manual, conceptual and statistical ability to investigate physical phenomena. Needing very simple apparatus, pendulum experiments are an ideal starting point in our…
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…
Education is a goal-oriented field. But if we want to treat education scientifically so we can accumulate, evaluate, and refine what we learn, then we must develop a theoretical framework that is strongly rooted in objective observations…
Framing affects how students interpret, approach, and accomplish tasks. Little is known, however, about how students frame tasks in physics labs. During the first lab of a sequence designed to teach students about modeling and critical…
Implementing a laboratory activity involves a complex interplay among learning goals, available resources, feedback about the existing course, best practices for teaching, and an overall philosophy about teaching labs. Building on our…
The ability to develop, use, and refine models of experimental systems is a nationally recognized learning outcome for undergraduate physics lab courses. However, no assessments of students' model-based reasoning exist for upper-division…
In this paper, we reflect on the educational challenges and research opportunities in running data visualization design activities in the context of large courses. With the increasing number and sizes of data visualization course, we need…
Background: Software modelling is a creative yet challenging task. Modellers often find themselves lost in the process, from understanding the modelling problem to solving it with proper modelling strategies and modelling tools. Students…
For the past five years advanced students have developed projects for our redesigned Calculus II classes to use. Our student project designers are often mathematically early in their careers, and so this provides them with an opportunity to…
Laboratory based courses play a critical role in scientific education. Automation is changing the nature of the laboratories, and there is a long running debate about the value of hands on versus simulated and remote laboratories. The…
An instructor teaching a course on Software Architecture needs to be more reflective to engage students productively in the learning activities. In this reflective essay, the author identifies a few decisive moments referred to as…
In its most general form, a `secret objective' is any inconsistency between the experimental reality and the information provided to students prior to starting work on an experiment. Students are challenged to identify the secret objectives…
Physics education researchers have argued that authentic physics education includes computation as part of a physics student's training, and many parties have made efforts towards this goal. However, most research on this teaching modality…
Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for the advance of research. As domain subjects become more and more specialized, researchers need to cross disciplines for insights from peers in other areas to have a broader and deeper…
We redesigned an advanced physics laboratory course to include a project component. The intention was to address learning outcomes such as modeling, design of experiments, teamwork, and developing technical skills in using apparatus and…
We investigated physics students' learning experience and behaviour in a second-year laboratory by analyzing transcribed audio recordings of laboratory sessions. One student group was given both a problem and procedure and asked to analyze…
The single, double, and triple pendulum has served as an illustrative experimental benchmark system for scientists to study dynamical behavior for more than four centuries. The pendulum system exhibits a wide range of interesting behaviors,…
When education researchers describe newly developed curricular materials, they typically concentrate on the research base behind their design, and the efficacy of the final products, but do not highlight the initial stages of creating the…
Educational technologies often misalign with instructors' pedagogical goals, forcing adaptations that compromise teaching efficacy. In this paper, we present a case study on the co-development of curriculum and technology in the context of…