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arXiv2019

Student and instructor framing in upper-division physics

Upper-division physics students spend much of their time solving problems. In addition to their basic skills and background, their epistemic framing can form an important part of their ability to learn physics from these problems. Encouraging students to move toward productive framing may help them solve problems. Thus, an instructor should understand the specifics of how student have framed a problem and understand how her interaction with the students will impact that framing. In this study we investigate epistemic framing of students in problem solving situations where math is applied to physics. To analyze the frames and changes in frames, we develop and use a two-axis framework involving conceptual and algorithmic physics and math. We examine student and instructor framing and the interactions of these frames over a range of problems in an upper-division electromagnetic fields course. Within interactions, students and instructors generally follow each others' leads in framing.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

NetSciEd: Network Science and Education for the Interconnected World

This short article presents a summary of the NetSciEd (Network Science and Education) initiative that aims to address the need for curricula, resources, accessible materials, and tools for introducing K-12 students and the general public to the concept of networks, a crucial framework in understanding complexity. NetSciEd activities include (1) the NetSci High educational outreach program (since 2010), which connects high school students and their teachers with regional university research labs and provides them with the opportunity to work on network science research projects; (2) the NetSciEd symposium series (since 2012), which brings network science researchers and educators together to discuss how network science can help and be integrated into formal and informal education; and (3) the Network Literacy: Essential Concepts and Core Ideas booklet (since 2014), which was created collaboratively and subsequently translated into 18 languages by an extensive group of network science researchers and educators worldwide.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2017

Statistical methods in astronomy

We present a review of data types and statistical methods often encountered in astronomy. The aim is to provide an introduction to statistical applications in astronomy for statisticians and computer scientists. We highlight the complex, often hierarchical, nature of many astronomy inference problems and advocate for cross-disciplinary collaborations to address these challenges.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

The Kelvin Water Dropper: Converting a physics toy into an educational device

The Kelvin Water Dropper was discovered by Lord Kelvin in 1867 and it works on the principle of electrostatic induction. A working model of Kelvin Water Dropper is fabricated in the workshop facility of Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad. We, for the first time, performed a quantitative measurement of the temporal development of charge using a new method that we call "Effective Capacitance method". With this, the Kelvin Water Dropper experiment can be introduced in undergraduate curriculum, where students can perform quantitative measurements with the apparatus using our "Effective Capacitance method". This should change the generally held view of Kelvin water dropper as being an entertaining toy to a mature educational device.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

An item response theory evaluation of the Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory national data set

This paper presents the first item response theory (IRT) analysis of the national data set on introductory, general education, college-level astronomy teaching using the Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory (LSCI). We used the difference between students' pre- and post-instruction IRT-estimated abilities as a measure of learning gain. This analysis provides deeper insights than prior publications into both the LSCI as an instrument and into the effectiveness of teaching and learning in introductory astronomy courses. Our IRT analysis supports the classical test theory findings of prior studies using the LSCI with this population. In particular, we found that students in classes that used active learning strategies at least 25\% of the time had average IRT-estimated learning gains that were approximately 1 logit larger than students in classes that spent less time on active learning strategies. We also found that instructors who want their classes to achieve an improvement in abilities of average $Δθ= 1$ logit must spend at least 25\% of class time on active learning strategies. However, our analysis also powerfully illustrates the lack of insight into student learning that is revealed by looking at a single measure of learning gain, such as average $Δθ$. Educators and researchers should also examine the distributions of students' abilities pre- and post-instruction in order to understand how many students actually achieved an improvement in their abilities and whether or not a majority of students have moved to post-abilities significantly greater than the national average.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

Guided and Unguided Student Reflections

Self-reflection is important metacognitive skill, enabling students to build coherence into their learning and embed content in a broader context. While various pedagogical techniques exist to encourage student reflection, little research has examined the differences between formally guided, partially guided and unguided reflections. This study focuses on student responses to online Guided Reflection Forms (GRFs) from students in a first-semester non-physics class and, separately, a sophomore-level Vibrations \& Waves course for physics majors, and compares these guided reflections with partially guided and unguided journals from a STEM enrichment summer program for incoming college students. A previously developed coding scheme was used on guided reflections and the {\bf LIWC} computational linguistics tool used to confirm the distinct nature of the categories. A new coding scheme was created and validated for the unguided journals. We find that both guided and unguided reflections elicit metacognitive and reflective practice, although of measurably different frequencies and kinds.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

The overestimated potential of solar energy to mitigate climate change

Many aspects of solar energy and policies to tackle the energy transition have been neglected. Even though the earth is plenty of sun energy, our planet is not plenty of resources to transform that energy into electricity. This is a case between many others where an strongly optimistic bias is shadowing the white elephant in the room.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2017

An Undergraduate Test of Gravitational Time Dilation

Students at Colorado College and cadets at the US Air Force Academy have conducted an experimental test of gravitational time dilation. This relativistic effect, highlighted in the movie Interstellar, causes clocks to tick more slowly near massive objects. A measurement of gravitational time dilation was made by comparing signals generated by a GPS frequency standard, which is based on sea-level time, to a cesium-beam frequency standard located at three different elevations above sea level. The effect is small but observable; for the highest elevation studied (4302 m on the summit of Pikes Peak), a local clock ticks only 41 ns/day faster than a sea-level clock. Our results are consistent with the predictions of general relativity. We also discuss implications of gravitational time dilation on GPS operations.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2018

Making Physics Courses Accessible for Blind Students: strategies for course administration, class meetings and course materials

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates that U.S. institutions of higher education provide "reasonable accommodations" to students with disabilities to ensure equal educational opportunities. However, despite the key role of physics as a gateway to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) studies, only limited resources exist for teaching physics to students who are blind or visually impaired. Here we share lessons from our experience creating an accessible physics curriculum for a blind physics major. The authors include the student himself, a blind physics B.S. who graduated from a different institution, a PhD chemist and consultant on STEM accessibility who is himself blind, and several sighted educators and course assistants who worked regularly with the students. Throughout this effort, we learned that many of the principles of universal design described herein enhanced learning for all of our students.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

Quantitative Measures of Equity in Small Groups

This project investigates how to quantitatively measure equity in small student groups. We follow several student groups to operationalize how discourse may be equitable or inequitable. The groups came from a two week, pre-college program that prepares first generation and deaf/hard-of-hearing students to major in a STEM field. In the program, students focus on improving their metacognitive skills and cultural preparation for college life within a context of model building. We use three methods to measure equity. First, we look at speaking time: who talks, when, and to whom. Second, we look to segment student discourse by analyzing consistency of group speaking time. Third, we analyze group equality over time changes. We analyze these methods to see how effective they are at capturing equity in group discourse.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2018

Mechanics and special relativity: tutorial problems with solutions

The manual contains (in Russian) solutions of 230 problems that were used by the author for a number of years at the tutorial seminars in the first year undergraduate course in Mechanics and special relativity at Novosibirsk State University. The manual consists of 36 chapters - according to the number of seminars in this course. In each chapter, from 5 to 10 problems are dealt with. Where possible, several solutions of the same problem are given in order the students to become used to treating physical phenomena from different points of view. Most problems are taken from the problem book Yu.I. Belchenko, E.A. Gilev, Z.K. Silagadze, V.G. Sokolov, Collection of problems in the mechanics of particles and bodies, Novosibirsk: NSU, 2000. For such problems, the corresponding number in the problem book is indicated in parentheses.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

Esperienze di didattica della fisica in diversi livelli del sistema educativo

The growing interest of people in science events, the projects supported by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research to foster STEM teaching in different levels of the education system and the introduction of modern physics in some Italian high schools, contributed to the strengthening of interaction between schools, universities and research centers. This interaction realized in dedicated activities characterized by innovative communication and education strategies.This paper presents the events of science dissemination organized in the last years by the University of Ferrara and the National Institute for Nuclear Physics taking into account some case study differentiated by contents, recipients and education strategies.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

Systemic inequities in introductory physics courses: the impacts of learning assistants

Creating equitable performance outcomes among students is a focus of many instructors and researchers. One focus of this effort is examining disparities in physics student performance across genders, which is a well-established problem. Another less common focus is disparities across racial and ethnic groups, which may have received less attention due to low representation rates making it difficult to identify gaps in their performance. In this investigation we examined associations between Learning Assistant (LA) supported courses and improved equity in student performance. We built Hierarchical Linear Models of student performance to investigate how performance differed by gender and by race/ethnicity and how LAs may have moderated those differences. Data for the analysis came from pre-post concept inventories in introductory mechanics courses collected through the Learning About STEM Student Outcomes (LASSO) platform. Our models show that gaps in performance across genders and races/ethnicities were similar in size and increased from pre to post instruction. LA-support is meaningfully and reliably associated with improvement in overall student performance but not with shifts in within-course performance gaps.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

Assessment Formats and Student Learning Performance: What is the Relation?

Although compelling assessments have been examined in recent years, more studies are required to yield a better understanding of the several methods where assessment techniques significantly affect student learning process. Most of the educational research in this area does not consider demographics data, differing methodologies, and notable sample size. To address these drawbacks, the objective of our study is to analyse student learning outcomes of multiple assessment formats for a web-facilitated in-class section with an asynchronous online class of a core data communications course in the Undergraduate IT program of the Information Sciences and Technology (IST) Department at George Mason University (GMU). In this study, students were evaluated based on course assessments such as home and lab assignments, skill-based assessments, and traditional midterm and final exams across all four sections of the course. All sections have equivalent content, assessments, and teaching methodologies. Student demographics such as exam type and location preferences are considered in our study to determine whether they have any impact on their learning approach. Large amount of data from the learning management system (LMS), Blackboard (BB) Learn, had to be examined to compare the results of several assessment outcomes for all students within their respective section and amongst students of other sections. To investigate the effect of dissimilar assessment formats on student performance, we had to correlate individual question formats with the overall course grade. The results show that collective assessment formats allow students to be effective in demonstrating their knowledge.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2019

Seeing the real world: Comparing learning from verification labs and traditional or enhanced lecture demonstrations

Instructors in introductory physics courses often use labs and demonstrations to reinforce that the physics equations introduced in lectures and textbooks describe what actually happens in the real world. The surface features and instructional learning goals of such labs and demonstrations may seem quite similar (predict-observe-explain). Nonetheless, physics education research has found very different impacts of these instructional methods on students' physics content knowledge that depend critically on several instructional characteristics. In this paper, we disentangle the research by comparing details of the learning methods in verification labs, traditional lecture demonstrations, and enhanced lecture demonstrations. We discuss possible mechanisms for the measurably different learning outcomes by dissecting the activities according to the role of prediction, cognitive load, and engagement. We use this characterization to motivate rethinking the goals of labs towards experimentation skills and beliefs, rather than for verifying physics content.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2019

Gender response to Einsteinian physics interventions in School

There is growing interest in the introduction of Einsteinian concepts of space, time, light and gravity across the entire school curriculum. We have developed intervention programs and measured their effectiveness in terms of student attitudes to physics and ability to understand the concepts with classes from Years 6 to 10. In all cases we observe significant levels of conceptual understanding and improvement in student attitudes, although the magnitude of the improvement depends on age group and program duration. This paper reports an unexpected outcome in regard to gender effects. We have compared male and female outcomes. In most cases, independent of age group, academic stream and culture (including one intervention in Indonesia), we find that females enter our programmes with substantially lower attitude scores than males, while on completion their attitudes are comparable to the boys. This provides a strong case for widespread implementation of Einsteinian conceptual learning across the school curriculum. We discuss possible reasons for this effect.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2018

The Sun and its educational spectrum

The aim of this paper is to encourage science educators and outreach groups to look appropriately at the Sun and consider it as an extraordinary pedagogical tool to teach science at all education stages, what we call here as the solar educational spectrum, i.e., from K-12 to higher education, to develop informal educational projects that may lead to reach more complex material and to enlarge the experience at each stage. We review the main aspects of the Sun as an appetizer of the endless source of ideas to perform informal educational projects outside of a structured curriculum. We end up our discussion by sharing our experience across the educational spectrum in Colombia and how we used it as a development instrument.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2017

Simulation on various topocentric points of the zodiac constellations

On the sighting of the constellations and their stars, they seem to be near each other at first sight but some of thema are actually quite further from the others. Froma the geocentric point view can the Zodiac Costellations be perceived as referential marks divided into terrestrial ecliptic, which are organized according to their shapes. In this paper are these star groups simulated in order to compare the shapes of these groups and the diverse coordinate system of the astronomy. Within the simulation is the distance measure light-year remplaced with a so-called program's default "unity" that uses a compilation in Python, where such distances are escalated to 1:10

physics.ed-ph↗