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The Learning Assistant (LA) Program can be used as a pathway for students to develop pedagogical skills and gain independence in a variety of different learning environments. Here we describe the growth of a Physics LA over four semesters. Starting with a course in pedagogy along with the active facilitation of group learning, we can see the LA creating a strong foundation in their educational skills. Through diversity and inclusion trainings, the LA can start to cater to the different learning styles of students more effectively. As the LA becomes more adept in assisting students, they can take on more independent tasks like running discussion boards, providing exam reviews, and hosting office hours. After just four semesters, we can see the LA becoming self-sufficient in the classroom setting. Throughout their experience, the LA continually receives mentoring from professors and establishes rapport with peers of similar paths.

AAPT WM 22

The Growth of a Physics Learning Assistant over Four Semesters

learning assistant

pedagogy

advice

**Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics**

As a gateway discipline to STEM majors and careers, physics plays a central role in deciding who does, and who doesn't, get to discover and pursue scientific careers. Technical and scientific professionals are rewarded with economic privilege and status which affords them both social and cultural power. Therefore, social justice will be realized only when the opportunity, and the choice, to excel in physics is open to all students. The culture and practices of the physics classroom reflect the culture of physics at large, which raises the question of how our professional physics communities can embrace, rather than inadvertently repel, a diverse group of academics that can help improve physics culture.  To this end, the 2021 Physics Education Research Conference will focus on defining inclusive spaces and practices. Additionally, we will explore strategies for eliminating exclusionary practices in our classrooms, research spaces, and professional organizations. We call on the community to propose sessions that will drive conversations related to these initiatives throughout PERC 2021.

Please download the full program [here. ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TRMC_SYJ3PUqXyP7sskA7LRSA8ow0eRE/view?usp=sharing)

PERC SM 21

August 4, 2021 - August 5, 2021 in a Virtual Conference Format

Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics

poster

This meeting is a great opportunity to explore sessions and workshops designed with your professional development in mind. Present your research and exchange ideas on the latest in teaching and pedagogy. Participate in a wide range of events, activities, plenaries, and so much more, connecting you with peers and colleagues who share your commitment to excellence in physics education.

Helping students develop problem solving skills is a common learning outcome in introductory physics which can be challenging to achieve, particularly in large enrollment courses. This presentation showcases one of our web-based Interactive video-enhanced tutorials (IVETs), which guides students through an expert-like problem-solving approach for a challenging problem involving a given topic, such as one dimensional motion involving two moving objects. IVETs include mini-lectures by a narrator interspersed with branching multiple choice questions that include feedback, allowing students who require less guidance to navigate the tutorials quickly, while students who struggle receive more support according to their needs. This presentation will focus on our One-Dimensional Kinematics IVET and provide details about its design features and impact on students’ problem-solving abilities.

Teaching Problem Solving in One-Dimensional Kinematics Using Interactive Video-enhanced Tutorials

Introductory physics students routinely learn about acoustical beats as a consequence of wave interference. This example is sometimes used to gesture toward heterodyning in commercial radios. Introductory physics students also learn about the overtone series as a consequence of standing waves. Overtones are then used to explain musical timbre and to hint at the importance of Fourier methods. Yet acoustical beats and the overtone series are rarely linked in introductory physics, despite the fact that musicians habitually listen for beats to tune their harmonies. Acoustical beats and harmonic overtones be can be related simply, without any extra physics background, and their relationship leads directly to the problems of musical temperament that have bedeviled musical theorists ever since Pythagoras. Such problems are outlined in this talk, along with suggestions for further reading.

Beats, Overtones, and Musical Temperament

In Spring 2018, I was approached by the Art/Communications/Theater instructors about the unhappiness of their students with the science course options at our school. After talking with them, I applied for release time at our school and was allowed time to build some lab activities that better connected Art, Theater, Music to topics studied in our conceptual physics course. The new lab activities were implemented, and we coordinated the offering of this course with the program chairs in the arts and saw a dramatic increase in enrollment numbers (enrollment increased by 220% in this course). I will present some lessons learned from this experience in building a successful general science course focused on interesting Art/Theater/Communication/Music students.

Building a Physical Science of the Arts Course

Here is an opportunity to build two modular Origami structures, an Octahedral Skeleton (OS) and a turbine. You will need 12 square sheets of paper. The OS represents 3D space, and the turbine can be used to practice rotational motion physics. The second goal is having conversations about framing, as it relates to attracting students to physics and supporting them in physics. For over a decade I have used paper model building to guide learning Physics and Mathematics. In classes for students with majors other than the sciences we use paper to learn physics concepts, skills, and work on design and Art. Teaching an Origami Science class online led to my use of GIFs for instruction. In the GIFs paper in 2D danced into a final 3D object. This dance inspired paper choreography framing of teaching and learning physics. Many students take the class to fold, and endup doing physics.

Paper Choreography Framing of Learning and Teaching Physics

In our modern society, science and art are often perceived as unrelated endeavors. However, the idea that artistic creativity and imagination can play an important role in natural sciences and engineering is finally gaining an acceptance. One of the big questions about the connection between art and science is what features make the work of art look realistic. Questions like this open the dialog between physicists and a public. For example, examining paintings, drawings, and photographs can be used to demonstrate the laws of optics. The presentation will demonstrate how the understanding of basic optics phenomena such as an absorption, scattering, reflection, refraction, diffraction, and polarization of light, is absolutely essential for creating realistic-looking paintings and drawings. Using arts in science and engineering education and outreach has a potential to attract and captivate the new audiences.

Harnessing Visual Arts to Teach About The Light And Color

Columbia College Chicago specializes in arts and media disciplines, and as a result, our most popular physics classes are "The Science of Acoustics" and "Science of Musical Instruments." Also, I have taught a course called "Physics for Filmmakers" (1) for over a decade where students create a final film project using topics and examples of their choice. I will discuss ideas from recent projects including some done over a recent remote term. I also will discuss plans to transition that course to a conceptual physics course which includes the best discussions and project prompts from "Filmmakers" but is also open to projects in music (2) and other forms of the arts.

Including art projects as part of physics courses

Logistic regression, random forest, and ensemble classification algorithms are used to predict students at risk of receiving a failing grade (D or F) in an introductory mechanics class. Institutional variables as well as student performance variables gathered from the first two weeks of class are used. Due to the imbalanced nature of the data, upsampling methods such as synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE) and alternative metrics such as balanced accuracy for evaluating model performance are examined. The importance of variables to the final classification is explored. The best performing models are found to achieve a balanced accuracy of around 80%.

Predicting At-Risk Students in Introductory Physics using Machine Learning

Over the last 25 years, educational researchers have encouraged practitioners to acknowledge and include culturally relevant pedagogy in physics learning. We examine current physics instructors’ views of objectivity in physics and their views of culturally relevant pedagogy. Instructors’ statements are analyzed using the conceptions of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) listed in Ladson-Billings’ (1995) framework: Conceptions of Self and Others, Conceptions of Knowledge, and Social Relations. We interviewed 11 physics instructors asking about their views towards CRP and objectivity in physics. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. We share two illustrations of instructors who had strong Conceptions of Knowledge that supported CRP: they focus on the knowledge of physics as being constructed and reconstructed - now and into the future. Findings from our study indicate that the third conception, Conceptions of Knowledge, is crucial to develop if we want physics instructors to truly and effectively use CRP.

How Perceived Objectivity in Physics Impacts Cultural Relevance in Teaching

Student understanding of measurement uncertainty is a common learning goal among introductory physics lab courses. In this study, we investigate the open-ended responses to the Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) from students enrolled in the two-semester Design, Analysis, Tools, and Apprenticeship (DATA) Lab course at Michigan State University. Using an unsupervised natural language processing technique, Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), we were able to extract themes/topics from student responses to this assessment which were in line with the paradigms recently published by Pollard et al. The extracted themes from LDA were then compared to previously hand coded responses. Comparing the prevalence of the extracted topics to the frequencies of the hand-coded responses led to close agreement between the two analyses. Based on these results, topic modelling techniques may be able to provide insight into student understanding of measurement reasoning.

Investigating Open-Ended Responses to the PMQ using Natural Language Processing

The Learning Assistant Program is a relatively recent advancement in undergraduate education. The core tenet of the program aims to have undergraduate students use instructor-approved and research-backed group activities and discussions along with general peer support to encourage active participation in the course they assist in. Students requiring special accommodations make up a significant portion of students. In this poster, learning assistant anecdotes of interactions with these populations are presented. The use of learning assistants and dialogue between pertinent entities, the instructor, and the student as a means of allowing needed flexibility in these courses are explored. Sponsored by: Sujata Krishna, Ph.D.

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Teaching Problem Solving in One-Dimensional Kinematics Using Interactive Video-enhanced Tutorials

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An investigation of how instructors choose to implement the Learning Assistant (LA) pedagogy course and their motivations