Bulletin of the American Physical Society
15th Annual Meeting of the Northwest Section of the APS
Volume 59, Number 6
Thursday–Saturday, May 1–3, 2014; Seattle, Washington
Session G5: Physics Education |
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Chair: Stamatis Vokos Amy Robertson, Seattle Pacific University Room: Alder Commons 106 |
Saturday, May 3, 2014 4:00PM - 4:30PM |
G5.00001: Is ``Interactive'' Teaching Sufficient to Promote Conceptual Development in Physics? Invited Speaker: Paula Heron Over the past few decades, systematic research has shown that many physics students express essentially the same (incorrect) ideas both before and after instruction. It is frequently assumed that these ideas can be identified by research and then addressed through ``interactive'' teaching approaches such as hands-on activities and small-group collaborative work. In many classrooms, incorrect ideas are elicited, their inadequacy is exposed, and students are guided in reconciling their prior knowledge with the formal concepts of the discipline. Variations of this strategy have proven fruitful in science instruction at all levels from elementary through graduate school. However, this summary greatly over-simplifies the use of students' ideas as the basis for effective instructional strategies. Examining what students have actually learned after using research-based curriculum is essential for improving the curriculum and validating its effectiveness. I will illustrate the process with examples from introductory physics. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 3, 2014 4:30PM - 5:00PM |
G5.00002: Today's Students; Tomorrow's Engineers and Scientists: A Program of Hands-on Experiential Involvement for Undergraduate Students at Montana State University Invited Speaker: David Klumpar At Montana State University -- Bozeman undergraduate and graduate students are fully engaging in the practice of their future careers as aerospace scientists and engineers through design, development and flight of spaceflight hardware, and its operation in space. Objectives of the student-focused program include hands-on experiential training that complements the core scientific and engineering knowledge they draw from their formal coursework. An equally high-priority goal is to conduct scientific investigations in space and to push the technological state-of the art in small low-cost spaceflight systems. A bonus of the program includes the opportunity for students to ``test-drive'' their potential careers before it becomes too late to make career path adjustments. These extracurricular involvements include developing systems engineering and project management skills; realizing the importance of working together as a highly interdisciplinary well-coordinated team; utilizing systematic and methodological processes and procedures; and understanding the importance of completely documenting their design and development process. The speaker will describe how professionally-mentored, yet completely extracurricular hands-on activities can work to complement the traditional formal educational activities of colleges and universities to fast-track our students for STEM careers in a technologically advanced society. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 3, 2014 5:00PM - 5:12PM |
G5.00003: Techniques for teaching critical thinking in a first year physics laboratory N.G. Holmes, D.A. Bonn One of the highest aims of education research is to explore how students can learn scientific reasoning and critical thinking skills. At UBC, we took on the ambitious goal of engaging students in meaningful reflection of the data they collect in an introductory physics lab. Our aim was to develop habits of mind that were essential to critical thinking. This included a procedural subgoal to teach students a set of data handling skills that spanned from histograms and standard deviation to weighted least-squares fitting. These analytic skills supported the development of advanced experimentation behaviours, including reflecting on data to identify systematic errors and adjusting models based on the quality of fits. This presentation will describe some of the new teaching techniques and course elements that went into achieving these goals and present the dramatic improvements in students' unsupported experimentation behaviours over previous iterations of the course. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 3, 2014 5:12PM - 5:24PM |
G5.00004: The Use of Representations in Physics Ximena Cid, Orlala Weatnick Physics concepts are often presented with multiple representations (mathematical, diagrammatical etc.). The use of these representations can be extremely useful for students learning new physics concepts. In some cases, however, the representation can introduce difficulties unforeseen to the creator. This talk will discuss specific representations that students are having difficulty with. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 3, 2014 5:24PM - 5:36PM |
G5.00005: Student reasoning about superposition in quantum mechanics Gina Passante, Paul Emigh, Peter Shaffer Superposition is at the heart of quantum mechanics, and yet we have found that many students struggle with this idea even at the end of instruction. Although most students can successfully use the idea of superposition to calculate probabilities of different measurement outcomes, we have found that they often fail to recognize how a superposition state differs from a mixture or from a system whose initial state is unknown. This distinction is one of fundamental importance in quantum mechanics and has implications for more complex topics such as entanglement. We present data from undergraduate and graduate-level quantum mechanics courses that illustrate some of the difficulties that students have with superposition. We also discuss how the results have guided the design of a lecture-tutorial that improves student understanding both immediately and months after instruction. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, May 3, 2014 5:36PM - 5:48PM |
G5.00006: Tutorials on Angular Momentum in Quantum Mechanics Paul Emigh, Gina Passante, Peter Shaffer As part of our examination of student understanding of quantum mechanics, the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington has probed student ideas related to angular momentum. Results from interviews and long-answer questions administered in a junior-level course for physics majors have revealed significant difficulties. For example, even after lecture instruction, many students use reasoning appropriate to classical mechanics rather than quantum mechanics. There is also substantial confusion between the different symbols, notations, and representations associated with angular momentum. We have developed a sequence of two tutorials to address these difficulties, modeled on \textit{Tutorials in Introductory Physics,} the materials our group is developing for introductory physics courses. Results from pre- and post-tests suggest that this pair of tutorials can help improve student understanding of angular momentum, but there is still more that can be done. [Preview Abstract] |
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