arXiv subjects

Emily M. Stump

Publications and source records attributed to Emily M. Stump.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

A method to assess trustworthiness of machine coding at scale

Physics education researchers are interested in using the tools of machine learning and natural language processing to make quantitative claims from natural language and text data, such as open-ended responses to survey questions. The aspiration is that this form of machine coding may be more efficient and consistent than human coding, allowing much larger and broader data sets to be analyzed than is practical with human coders. Existing work that uses these tools, however, does not investigate norms that allow for trustworthy quantitative claims without full reliance on cross-checking with human coding, which defeats the purpose of using these automated tools. Here we propose a four-part method for making such claims with supervised natural language processing: evaluating a trained model, calculating statistical uncertainty, calculating systematic uncertainty from the trained algorithm, and calculating systematic uncertainty from novel data sources. We provide evidence for this method using data from two distinct short response survey questions with two distinct coding schemes. We also provide a real-world example of using these practices to machine code a data set unseen by human coders. We offer recommendations to guide physics education researchers who may use machine-coding methods in the future.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2023

Context affects student thinking about sources of uncertainty in classical and quantum mechanics

Measurement uncertainty is an important topic in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Previous research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty has focused primarily on introductory-level students' procedural reasoning about data collection and interpretation. In this paper, we extended this prior work to study upper-level students' thinking about sources of measurement uncertainty across experimental contexts, with a particular focus on classical and quantum mechanics contexts. We developed a survey to probe students' thinking in the generic question "What comes to mind when you think about measurement uncertainty in [classical/quantum] mechanics?" as well as in a range of specific experimental scenarios and interpreted student responses through the lens of availability and accessibility of knowledge pieces. We found that limitations of the experimental setup were most accessible to students in classical mechanics while principles of the underlying physics theory were most accessible to students in quantum mechanics, even in a context in which this theory was not relevant. We recommend that future research probe which sources of uncertainty experts believe are relevant in which contexts and how instruction in both classical and quantum contexts can help students draw on appropriate sources of uncertainty in classical and quantum experiments.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2023

Comparing introductory and beyond-introductory students' reasoning about uncertainty

Uncertainty is an important concept in physics laboratory instruction. However, little work has examined how students reason about uncertainty beyond the introductory (intro) level. In this work we aimed to compare intro and beyond-intro students' ideas about uncertainty. We administered a survey to students at 10 different universities with questions probing procedural reasoning about measurement, student-identified sources of uncertainty, and predictive reasoning about data distributions. We found that intro and beyond-intro students answered similarly on questions where intro students already exhibited expert-level reasoning, such as in comparing two data sets with the same mean but different spreads, identifying limitations in an experimental setup, and predicting how a data distribution would change if more data were collected. For other questions, beyond-intro students generally exhibited more expert-like reasoning than intro students, such as when determining whether two sets of data agree, identifying principles of measurement that contribute to spread, and predicting how a data distribution would change if better data were collected. Neither differences in student populations, lab courses taken, nor research experience were able to fully explain the variability between intro and beyond-intro student responses. These results call for further research to better understand how students' ideas about uncertainty develop beyond the intro level.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2023

New perspectives on student reasoning about measurement uncertainty: More or better data

Uncertainty is an important and fundamental concept in physics education. Students are often first exposed to uncertainty in introductory labs, expand their knowledge across lab courses, and then are introduced to quantum mechanical uncertainty in upper-division courses. This study is part of a larger project evaluating student thinking about uncertainty across these contexts. In this research, we investigate advanced physics student thinking about uncertainty by asking them conceptual questions about how a hypothetical distribution of measurements would change if `more' or `better' data were collected in four different experimental scenarios. The scenarios include both classical and quantum experiments, as well as experiments that theoretically result in an expected single value or an expected distribution. This investigation is motivated by our goal of finding insights into students' potential point- and set-like thinking about uncertainty and of shining light on the limitations of those binary paradigms.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2020

Student reasoning about sources of experimental measurement uncertainty in quantum versus classical mechanics

Measurement uncertainty and experimental error are important concepts taught in undergraduate physics laboratories. Although student ideas about error and uncertainty in introductory classical mechanics lab experiments have been studied extensively, there is relatively limited research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty in quantum mechanics. In this work, we used semi-structured interviews to study advanced physics students' interpretations of fictitious data distributions from two common undergraduate laboratory experiments in quantum mechanics and one in classical mechanics. To analyze these interpretations, we developed a coding scheme that classifies student responses based on what factors they believe create uncertainty and differentiates between different types of uncertainty (e.g. imprecision, inaccuracy). We found that participants in our study expressed a variety of ideas about measurement uncertainty that varied with the context (classical/quantum) and the type of uncertainty.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2020

Student evaluation of more or better experimental data in classical and quantum mechanics

Prior research has shown that physics students often think about experimental procedures and data analysis very differently from experts. One key framework for analyzing student thinking has found that student thinking is more point-like, putting emphasis on the results of a single experimental trial, whereas set-like thinking relies on the results of many trials. Recent work, however, has found that students rarely fall into one of these two extremes, which may be a limitation of how student thinking is evaluated. Measurements of student thinking have focused on probing students' procedural knowledge by asking them, for example, what steps they might take next in an experiment. Two common refrains are to collect more data, or to improve the experiment and collect better data. In both of these cases, the underlying reasons behind student responses could be based in point-like or set-like thinking. In this study we use individual student interviews to investigate how advanced physics students believe the collection of more and better data will affect the results of a classical and a quantum mechanical experiment. The results inform future frameworks and assessments for characterizing students thinking between the extremes of point and set reasoning in both classical and quantum regimes.

physics.ed-ph↗