Session Z06: Physics Education Research on Labs

Live

With the adoption of instructional laboratories (labs) that require students to design and implement their own experiments, there is a need for additional research examining students' engagement in these labs. In this talk, we present summaries of the trajectories of seven groups of students in a single lab session. The students were prompted to predict and investigate the acceleration of multiple objects in flight, including beach balls and basketballs. The beach balls were intentionally included to prompt a conflict, as students were asked to predict the acceleration of the ball considering models including gravity or gravity and drag and the buoyant force on the beach ball causes unexpectedly low accelerations. We describe the differences and similarities between the groups that engaged productively with this conflict and those that did not. How students \textit{frame} the activity---that is, what their expectations are for what is taking place---differs between those that engage productively in the problem and those that do not.   

Live

There have been recent calls to shift the focus of undergraduate 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 and fostering students' attitudes about experimental physics. To address these questions, we analyzed data collected using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) and the Physics Lab Inventory of Critical thinking (PLIC). We administered these surveys to more than 20,000 students from over 100 institutions in the United States and internationally. Our results from this large dataset indicate that labs designed explicitly to develop lab skills are most effective for improving students' critical thinking skills and attitudes about experimental physics. We further find that this effect is consistent across various subpopulations of students (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity) and can be partially explained by the increased opportunities for decision-making that students face in labs designed to develop their experimentation skills.   

Live

Many physics departments have recently reformed their laboratory curricula to open up the lab structure in order to teach students more authentic research practices. Yet some students still expect to confirm a particular theory, and some expect to have a low level of decision-making agency as they plan their experiments. We study these expectations through the theoretical construct of frames, where a frame is defined as a person's stable set of expectations about the activity taking place. We identify evidence of different frames in student written coursework. These frames include \textit{worksheet frame} (low decision-making agency, evidenced by a low degree of original experimental design ideas or justification and high overlap to the structure of the lab manual), \textit{confirmation frame} (low epistemic agency, evidenced by arguments that focus on confirming a particular theoretical result), and \textit{original investigation frame} (high epistemic and decision-making agency, evidenced by high degree of original argumentation and conclusion-making and independent and justified design ideas). We apply supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods to the students' written work to facilitate qualitative analysis and determine trends in student framing.   

Live

During the COVID period, most physics undergraduate laboratories went online. In Lodz University of Technology virtual, javascript experiments for the first-year students were prepared. The physics course is a basic course for students of every engineering faculty. Using observations, surveys for students and teachers we analyze the disadvantages and advantages of this process. Some of them are surprising. Many students do not see a big difference between real and virtual experiments. What is missing is real contact with a tutor, not real experiments. This observation may suggest that these real experiments should be replaced by more challenging ones. Students have a tendency to blame virtual experiments for any inaccuracy despite the fact that virtual experiments are usually much more precise (sometimes even too precise) comparing original ones. Many teachers have a tendency to replicate the original experiments one to one, not thinking about new possibilities to increase measurement spectrum or making experiments that are not possible in the real lab due to high cost or complication. In the end, some propositions of a better use of virtual experiments in the undergraduate physics lab are presented.   

Live

The Department of Physics at North Carolina A{\&}T State University aims at transforming course delivery of introductory physics courses and associated labs by adapting and implementing the Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies (SCALE-UP) model. The SCALE-UP format is a student-centered active learning method that promotes active learning and integrates lecture and laboratory work into one. We piloted several versions of the SCALE-UP model, including a full SCALE-UP and a hybrid form of SCALE-UP, which include all the interactivity and engagement of the SCALE-UP method with the exception that the labs are not integrated into the lecture. Student performance and attitude toward learning were measured through gains on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) standardized test, analysis of the Colorado Learning Attitudes About Science (CLASS) survey data, student class attendance, and overall student grades. This paper describes the methods used and the preliminary results of the SCALE-UP project implementation.   

Live

Measurement uncertainty is an important concept taught in undergraduate physics curricula, both in theoretical and laboratory courses. Although student ideas about error and uncertainty have been extensively studied in introductory classical mechanics lab experiments, there is relatively limited research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty in more advanced physics contexts, such as quantum mechanics. In this work, we used open-response surveys to study advanced physics students' interpretations of fictitious data distributions from several common laboratory experiments in both classical and quantum mechanics. We coded student responses based on what sources of uncertainty they identified and how they believed the data would change if more or better data were collected. In this talk, I will discuss how student reasoning about measurement uncertainty varies across physics contexts.   

Live

The Novel Observations in Mixed Reality (NOMR) project in the UW Physics Education Research Group applies modern virtual reality technology to teach experimental physics skills by simulating phenomena that do not exist in our universe. By exploring and characterizing unheard-of and Google-proof physical phenomena, students are able to practice experimental physics skills on a level playing field and in absence of a "right answer" to work toward or be judged against. We postulate that NOMR labs can engender expert-like beliefs and habits of mind about experimental physics in students, as measured by instruments such as the Colorado Learning Attitudes About Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) and Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) rubrics. In this work, we discuss the administration of NOMR labs in a sophomore-level experimental physics course of \textasciitilde 120 students at UW in Fall 2020, emergent insights from a hybrid approach to running VR labs, and our measurements of students' shift in experimental physics thinking over the course. Insights from our findings will inform the design and future use of VR labs in remote contexts and other educational application areas.