United States

An approach to the design of curriculum supporting student engagement in mathematical sense making (MSM) is discussed. This approach draws from a categorical framework for MSM that is situated in the PER and science education literature on mathematical modeling and sense making. Two pieces of curricula spanning both content (the photoelectric effect and geometric optics) and course context (STEM-major versus non-STEM-major) designed using this framework are analyzed for the reasoning structures they are designed to scaffold.

PERC SM 20

Curriculum design to support mathematical sense making

mathematical sense making

curriculum

reasoning

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poster

Join us in exploring emergent themes in PER as a scholarly endeavor and as a research community!  Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?
Following the lead of AAPT for the summer meeting, PERC 20/20 was virtual. Enjoy browsing the content.

Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?

Using the theoretical framework of community of practice and physics identity, we investigate student perceptions of the physics community and competency among undergraduates at a mid-sized private research university. We analyze fifteen interviews of students belonging to three different populations: physics majors who are not Learning Assistants (LAs), physics majors who are LAs, and LAs who are not physics majors. By comparing the language used by participants, we hope to better understand student perceptions of community. In general, physics majors report that they do not perceive themselves as physicists because they do not yet have, in their view, the competencies of professional physicists, yet the rigidity with which they hold onto this perspective is somewhat setting dependent.

What is a Physicist? Learning Assistants and Physics Majors Views

In this work, exploring the longitudinal outcomes of Introductory Physics for Life Science (IPLS) on student learning, we examine whether differences in student work on a diffusion task given in the senior biology capstone course can be correlated with prior enrollment in IPLS, and how those differences reflect competencies developed in the IPLS curriculum. More specifically, we assess whether IPLS students are more likely to reason quantitatively about diffusive phenomena and to successfully coordinate between multiple representations of diffusive processes. We position these findings within the broader context of our longitudinal study of the impact of IPLS on student work in later biology and chemistry environments.

The impact of IPLS in a senior capstone biology course (PERC)

Understanding the student experience with emergency remote teaching (PERC)

Electricity is the main form of energy transfer and use in the 21st century, and its understanding is of central importance. We describe how 8th grade students learn the physics of electric circuits through building computational particle models of conductors. The gradual construction of the computational particle model of the conductor, embodies the conceptualization of repulsion between free electrons, the push of the electric field, and the hindrance of the stationary ions. Comparing Pre/Post questionnaire data with a control group, shows that building the model is a sound basis for macro-level understanding of electric dynamics. Qualitative analyses highlight how creative activities such as drawing the conductors boundary and spreading electrons in it, complement observing the working model and discussing its mechanism in the classroom. Drawing on constructivist and grounded theories of learning, we discuss how constructing models and making conceptual micro-macro connections results in meaningful learning of this difficult topic.

Constructing micro-level models to promote understanding of electric circuits in middle school

Latinas in physics experience multiple marginalization due to the intersection of their ethnicity and gender, thus it is important for the physics community to focus support and help them achieve their success in physics. To begin supporting Latinas in achieving success it is crucial that the community has an understanding of the diversity of goals that contribute to their overall success in physics. With this qualitative study we used interviews to explore the goals expressed by 20 undergraduate and graduate students who identify as Latinas across the United States. Guided by Motivational Systems Theory, we present the goals participants had in common (e.g. resource provisions and social responsibilities) as well as the different goals they emphasized (e.g. emphasis on affective goals versus integrative social relationship goals). These goal contents provide a more nuanced level of detail to goal orientations held by Latinas in physics and serve as examples of the relevant goals that the physics community should support.

Explicating the goal contents of Latinx female physics students

Holistic Teaching Evaluations and Knowledge in Use

Ideally, instructors and their institutions would have a shared set of metrics by which they determine teaching effectiveness. We asked 72 physics instructors to describe how they and their institutions assess teaching effectiveness. Results suggest that institutions typically base most or all of their assessment of teaching effectiveness on student evaluations of teaching. Instructors, on the other hand, base most or all of their assessment of teaching effectiveness on student exam performance and nonsystematic formative assessments. Few institutions and instructors use assessment practices suggested by the research literature. In general, instructors are much more positive about the methods they use to evaluate their teaching than the methods their institutions use to evaluate their teaching. Both instructors and institutions could benefit from broadening the assessment sources they use to evaluate teaching effectiveness through increased use of standardized measures based on student learning and greater reliance on systematic formative assessment.

Assessment of teaching effectiveness: Lack of alignment between instructors, institutions, and research recommendations

As VR becomes more common, there remain unanswered questions regarding how best to use this technology in the classroom. On the topic of electrostatics, for example, a large, controlled, randomized study performed by Smith et al. (2017), found that VR-based instruction had an overall negligible impact on student learning compared to videos or images. However, they did find a strong trend for students who reported frequent video game play to learn better from VR than other media. One possible interpretation of this result is that videogame play provides a kind of "training" that enables a student to learn more comfortably in the virtual environment. In the present work we test if a VR training activity unrelated to electrostatics can help prepare students to learn electrostatics from subsequent VR instruction. We find that preliminary VR training leads to a small but statistically significant improvement in student performance on our electrostatics assessment.

Using Virtual Reality in Electrostatics Instruction: The Impact of Training

The University of Washington (UW) Physics Education Group is creating virtual reality (VR) lab environments that simulate "novel" physical phenomena that do not exist in the real world but follow laws that can be modeled using techniques accessible to first-year physics laboratory students. Presenting these novel phenomena in VR provides an opportunity for authentic model-generating activities in introductory labs while retaining key components of in-person labs such as hands-on interaction, measurement uncertainty, and opportunities to build teamwork skills. This talk describes in detail the development of and students' experience modeling one such novel phenomenon, identifying the scientific reasoning skills students bring to bear in the absence of any expected experimental outcome and highlighting opportunities for this technique to build those skills.

Design and student experience of novel physics systems delivered in virtual reality labs

Compared to other formal learning environments in undergraduate physics programs, multiweek group projects in lab courses give rise to unique interactions between students, their peers, their instructors, and apparatus. What does teaching look like in these contexts? How do instructors change their teaching practices as students transition from proposing project topics to carrying out experiments and reporting on results? To answer these and related questions, we conducted a multiple case study of group project implementations in upper-division labs at five universities. In this presentation, we draw on data from interviews and surveys with instructors and students to identify a variety of teaching practices. We further describe the intended purposes and perceived impacts of these practices. Preliminary data analysis suggests that group projects may be a shared endeavor in which students and instructors have asymmetric apprenticeship-style roles and responsibilities.

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