Related papers: Improving the effectiveness of introductory physic…
Sliding friction is usually introduced in high school, but rarely through activities in laboratory. A qualitative introduction to friction is presented by proposing exploration of different kind of materials in order to suggest which…
In this paper, we discuss the question whether a physical "simplification" of a model makes it always easier to study, at least from a mathematical and numerical point of view. To this end, we give different examples showing that these…
A survey of 722 physics faculty conducted in 2008 found that many physics instructors had knowledge of research-based instructional strategies (RBISs), were interested in using more, but often discontinued use after trying. Considerable…
Helping students become proficient problem-solvers is one of the primary goals of physics courses. In part 1 of this article, we summarized the vast research on problem-solving relevant for physics instruction, and here we discuss a…
In this study, we adapt prior identity framework to investigate the effect of learning environment (including perceived recognition, peer interaction and sense of belonging) on students' physics self-efficacy, interest and identity by…
At the beginning of academic year 2007-08, staff in the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Glasgow started to implement a number of substantial changes to the first year physics class. The main aims were to improve the…
Most science classes and in particular Physics are delivered through traditional teaching methods. More specifically, in the traditional stand-and-deliver lecture, the information was transmitted unilaterally from the teacher to the student…
High school science classrooms across the United States are answering calls to make computation a part of science learning. The problem is that there is little known about the barriers to learning that computation might bring to a science…
We present a study of active learning pedagogies in an upper division physics course. This work was guided by the principle of deliberate practice for the development of expertise, and this principle was used in the design of the materials…
We report on the evolution of the largest physics course at the Technical University Berlin during the COVID-19 pandemic, which boosted the development of online learning content, electronic assessments, and, not at least, the…
The cyclic format of the undergraduate physics curriculum depends on students' ability to recall and utilize material covered in prior courses in order to reliably build on that knowledge in later courses. However, there is evidence to…
This paper introduces a new spreadsheet tool for adoption by high school or college level physics teachers who use common assessments in a pre-instruction/post-instruction mode to diagnose student learning and teaching effectiveness. The…
Energy is a complex idea that cuts across scientific disciplines. For life science students, an approach to energy that incorporates chemical bonds and chemical reactions is better equipped to meet the needs of life sciences students than a…
This study investigates how an urban, high school physics class responded to the inclusion of a classroom set of iPads and associated applications, such as screencasting. The participatory roles of students and the expressions of their…
Societal stereotypes and biases pertaining to who belongs in physics and who can excel in physics can impact motivational beliefs, e.g., of women and racial and ethnic minority students in physics courses. This study investigates how the…
Expressing physics problems in the form of a mathematical model is one of the most important stages in the problem-solving process. Particularly in algebraic symbolization, understanding the meanings of signs and being able to manipulate…
This paper first provides an overview of the pedagogical role of formative assessment in the undergraduate engineering classroom. In the last decade, technology-facilitated implementation of the collection and analysis of student responses…
We present a method to study engagement level uniformity in a class of students. We validate our method by comparing two semesters taught using different methods in a physics and mathematics course. The first semester used conventional…
A recent paper by Salehi et al. claims that the differences found between major demographic groups on scores in introductory college physics tests are due to differences in pre-college preparation. No evidence is produced, however, to show…
We address previous hypotheses about possible factors influencing the gender gap in attainment in physics. Specifically, previous studies claim that male advantage may arise from multiple-choice style questions, and that scaffolding may…