Session C11: Physics Education: Introductory Courses and Labs

On Demand

Effective teaching resulting in useful learning in large lecture formats is a critical challenge. The Next Generation Physical Science and Everyday Thinking (Next Gen PET) grew from Physics and Everyday Thinking (PET), shown to significantly affect both future teacher content knowledge and understanding of how students learn science. Developed with NSF support, it has been taught at two-year and four-year institutions, adapted for science methods courses, and offered as a workshop for practicing elementary teachers. However, it did not fit the the most widely used general education science class model (lecture and lab) that fulfills general education requirements at most colleges. With NSF support, in collaboration with PET creator Fred Goldberg, WVU faculty adapted Next Gen PET to work as a general education course which empowers faculty to easily implement education research in their physics courses by providing a well-tested and refined version of the curriculum that fits the lecture/lab format and makes full use of the rich supporting faculty resources developed for PET. The course serves particularly well for future high school teachers of other disciplines to gain required knowledge. Implementation details and some findings will be presented.   

Not Participating

Mathematical reasoning flexibility across physics contexts is a desirable learning outcome of introductory physics, where the ``math world'' and ``physical world'' meet. Physics Quantitative Literacy (PQL) is a set of interconnected skills and habits of mind that support quantitative reasoning about the physical world. We present the PIQL, Physics Inventory of Quantitative Literacy, in its validated form. Unlike \textit{concept} inventories, which assess conceptual mastery of specific physics ideas, PIQL is a \textit{reasoning} inventory that can provide snapshots of student ideas that are continuously developing. In this talk we will present the PIQL, patterns revealed in our analysis and trends in mathematical reasoning development that we see across the introductory calculus-based physics sequence from data collected over multiple terms at an R1 institution. Preliminary analysis of PIQL data reveals hierarchical mathematical reasoning patterns.   

Not Participating

With some trepidation, my colleagues and I at Loyola university Chicago, instituted a mandatory undergraduate research program for our first-year physics majors in the Spring semester of 1996. With some evolutionary changes along the way, the Freshman Projects program will be celebrating its 25th year this spring. In this talk, I will give a description of types of research projects students have worked on, the effect these projects have on the careers of these students, and how our physics program has been significantly transformed in the process.   

On Demand

There have been recent calls to shift the focus of introductory physics labs towards developing students' experimentation and critical thinking skills. Making these changes successfully at a large scale will require that we understand what features of lab curricula are most important for developing these skills. We have developed a relevant assessment, the Physics Lab Inventory of Critical thinking (PLIC), which has been administered to 11,071 students enrolled in 119 courses across 47 institutions. We are using this assessment to evaluate how different features of lab instruction affect students' critical thinking skills. For example, how does the primary purpose of the lab, the amount of structure versus freedom, or the degree of discovery versus confirmation affect students' performance on the PLIC? We also examine how performance on the PLIC varies across student-level variables in connection with different lab curricula (such as students' gender or prior preparation).   

On Demand

For the last three years, we have been transforming the labs for the calculus-based introductory physics courses at Cornell University. The redesign has focused on shifting the labs from reinforcing physics content to emphasizing experimentation. In this talk, I will discuss results of a controlled experiment of labs that have goals to reinforce physics content to those that emphasize experimentation skills. All students attended the same lecture and discussion sections, had the same homework and exams, but attended labs that had one of two aims: teaching experimentation or reinforcing content. I will describe how we compared the impacts of students' exam performance, how students spent their time in lab, and students' attitudes and beliefs about experimental physics between these two lab curricula. We find that labs designed to teach experimentation did not measurably impact students' exam performance, and, encouragingly, engaged students in expert-like experimentation practices and improved their attitudes and beliefs about experimental physics. The results of this study demonstrate benefits of using labs to teach experimentation and show that shifting instructional goals in labs can happen without cost to students' performance on exams.   

Questionable research practices in introductory physics labs

Some practices in particle physics research are in stark contrast to what students practice in introductory physics labs. One contrast is that students in introductory physics labs are often asked to confirm theories they learn in lectures while researchers strive to find ``new physics'' in experimental data. To highlight an unintended consequence of this practice, we evaluated students' lab notes from an early activity in an intro lab course. We found that about 30\% of student groups (out of 107 groups at three institutions) recorded questionable research practices in their lab notes such as subjective interpretations of results or manipulating equipment and data. The large majority of these practices were used to confirm a known theory that was not applicable in this context. We suspect these behaviors stem from students' prior exposure to labs that specifically ask them to confirm a known theory. We propose ways for physics labs to better engage students in authentic scientific practice and support them in the search of ``new physics'' in their data.   

On Demand

Building an in-house NMR setup for the advanced lab is a rich experience for an undergraduate, and the resulting apparatus will be a valuable addition to the advanced lab offerings. There are many decent schematics and articles dedicated to the construction of marginal oscillator circuits and Q-meter circuits to detect CW NMR signals. However these often specify obsolete components. The circuits themselves can be daunting to build for the novice. There are pitfalls not apparent from the schematics, like self resonance of capacitors etc. This work describes a number of NMR detectors constructed in house. The replacement of obsolete components, and different methods of construction are described. An attempt to convert some of the circuits to frequency scanning circuits using varactors will be presented.   

On Demand

The societal implications of technology developed through physics are not always clear. Physicists need to use ethical reasoning skills to maneuver through morally ambiguous situations. For this reason, curricula for physics students should also be geared towards developing these skills. My research focuses on the effects of ethical discussions in the physics classroom. I will present an examination of how students interpret and apply an ethical framework to conversations about the development of the atomic bomb and current STEM research. Using both student written work and video-recordings of in-class discussions, I analyze how the subject matter and interpersonal dynamics may influence students' interactions. I will present preliminary evidence that students avoid discussing the negative implications of the ethical framework, but also demonstrate a range of productive approaches to applying the framework which contribute to strong ethical arguments.