Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2023
Volume 68, Number 6
Minneapolis, Minnesota (Apr 15-18)
Virtual (Apr 24-26); Time Zone: Central Time
Session F17: Student Learning in Laboratory and Classroom SettingsEducation Undergrad Friendly
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Sponsoring Units: GPER Chair: John Thompson, University of Maine Room: Marquette VIII - 2nd Floor |
Sunday, April 16, 2023 8:30AM - 8:42AM |
F17.00001: Exploring student framing in non-traditional physics labs Natasha G Holmes, Meagan Sundstrom, David Hammer, Rachel E Scherr, Ian Descamps, Sophia Jeon Too often, traditional physics laboratory exercises have trained students to expect to follow rote procedures and confirm known results. Nationally, labs are being redesigned to help students to learn and to use practices of authentic scientific research. As instructors and departments make these changes, we must understand how students experience these shifts in both pedagogy, learning goals, and epistemology. This talk will present an overview of our work to study the range of students' framing in multiple non-traditional introductory physics labs, with a focus on understanding how to support students to have an expectation (frame) of designing their own experiments and drawing their own conclusions from the data they collect |
Sunday, April 16, 2023 8:42AM - 8:54AM |
F17.00002: A particle detector design, build, and test project for modern physics labs Larry D Isenhower Work on a design, build, and test style project for a sophomore modern physics lab is presented. For this project individual students first design a particle detector system based on scintillators and silicon photomultipliers. These designs are presented to the class and the class then selects two winning proposals and teams are created to take these proposals to a full conceptual design. These teams present their designs to a faculty "review board" and receive feedback on these designs and experimental goals. Finally the class selects a winning proposal and spends the last 3 weeks of lab building and testing this design. During this project, students get to see the process for how many modern physics experiments are created and implemented and get hands-on experience creating a complete particle detector system from designing mounting hardware, to wrapping scintillators, to creating front end electronics, and to writing data analysis software. There is also a major group component where the system as a whole depends on each sub-group getting their assigned tasks completed. From a first implementation it was found that engagement was very high and the first group was able to build a working hand-held, battery powered radiation detector. Methods used and takeaways from the first implementation year will be presented. |
Sunday, April 16, 2023 8:54AM - 9:06AM |
F17.00003: Creating VR Experiences for the Introdutory Physics Sequence. Christopher Oakley University of Colorado – Boulder started the Physics Education Technology (PhET) project in 2004. The project created a series of java-based applets that explore physics concepts and principles. Since then, dozens of papers have been published highlighting the effectiveness of PhET simulations or games. The PhET project has since expanded into an array of STEM fields. This projecct is creating a new generation of engaging simulated physics experiences. Spelman's Virtal Reality Experiences inPhysics (VREP) Project has begun work on two immersive virtual reality experiences that demonstrate physics concepts and principles. Current plans are to develop a freefall simulation and a electromagnetic field visualization room. We are designing activities that focus the user on physics experiences in these virtual worlds. Participating students are asked to sit for a survey of their experiences and content knowledge after working with the VREP Project. This presentation will show the pilot programs created thus far. |
Sunday, April 16, 2023 9:06AM - 9:18AM |
F17.00004: Conceptual understanding of sources of uncertainty: A new perspective on classifying student thinking about measurement Emily M Stump, Gina Passante, Natasha G Holmes Measurement uncertainty is a key concept in undergraduate physics laboratory courses. Prior work has introduced two paradigms of student thinking about sources of measurement uncertainty: pointlike thinkers, who believe that a single measurement can produce the "true value" in an experiment, and setlike thinkers, who believe that a set of measurements is necessary to draw conclusions. Other work, however, has suggested that very few students are pointlike thinkers and many students do not apply consistent pointlike or setlike thinking in all contexts. In this work, we propose new categories to describe a complementary aspect of student reasoning related to sources of uncertainty. We administered a survey to students at 12 universities asking them to list sources of uncertainty present in four experimental scenarios. Using cluster analysis, we identify distinct patterns of student reasoning about sources of uncertainty, which provide new perspectives on student thinking about measurement uncertainty beyond the point and set paradigms. |
Sunday, April 16, 2023 9:18AM - 9:30AM |
F17.00005: Examining student reasoning: A study with students at a Historically Black University John Kelly Physics education researchers agree that the field would benefit from investigations conducted with diverse student populations. This project examines physics teaching and student learning at a Historically Black University, thus contributing to a sparse body of research with this underrepresented population. The first phase involved presenting questions designed to disentangle conceptual understanding, reasoning, and intuition reported in the literature to an HBCU classroom. The “screening” question was intended to probe whether students had developed the necessary physics knowledge. The following “target” question required applying the same knowledge in a situation that elicits strongly appealing incorrect intuitive responses. The results revealed that our students performed significantly worse than students in the original studies. To explore several possible explanations in the next phase of the project, we developed an intervention with scaffolding to prime students' use of existing physics knowledge. With the scaffolding question, HBCU student performance improved significantly. Moreover, reasoning patterns observed in the prior studies appear to be replicated with the HBCU student population. Implications for instruction and research will be discussed. |
Sunday, April 16, 2023 9:30AM - 9:42AM |
F17.00006: Investigation of student reasoning about air resistance and terminal speed behavior of falling objects Andrew Boudreaux, Beth A Lindsey Introductory physics courses often present simple models in which salient, real-world factors are ignored. While sensible given constraints of time and student background, this approach can be unsatisfying for students and instructors. A velocity-dependent air resistance force, when incorporated with free-fall due to Earth's gravity alone, provides an accessible yet realistic model that can account for terminal speed behavior. Applying this model requires students to coordinate the drag force with the zero net force condition for objects moving uniformly. We have developed written questions and interview tasks to investigate student understanding of these ideas in the context of objects falling at terminal speed. In this talk, we present student responses as evidence of specific difficulties. We find that many students focus on a single variable, such as the cross-sectional area of the falling object, and give responses that seem to contradict previously learned ideas about force balance. The talk will include interpretation of selected reasoning difficulties using dual-process theories of reasoning drawn from cognitive psychology. |
Sunday, April 16, 2023 9:42AM - 9:54AM |
F17.00007: Leveraging dual-process theories to support student reasoning about air resistance Beth A Lindsey, Drew J Rosen, Andrew Boudreaux, MacKenzie R Stetzer, Mila Kryjevskaia An emerging body of research has shown that, even after research-based instruction, students who demonstrate correct conceptual understanding and reasoning on one task often fail to use the same knowledge and skills on related tasks. Observed inconsistencies can be accounted for by dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR), which assert that human cognition relies on two thinking processes. The first, the heuristic process, is fast, intuitive, and automatic, while the second, the analytic process, is slow, effortful, and deliberate. In this talk, I will describe how we have leveraged DPToR to develop an instructional intervention designed to improve student reasoning about the terminal speed behavior of falling objects. I will describe the results of a controlled experiment in which we tested the effectiveness of the DPToR-based intervention against a control condition in which students engaged in additional scaffolded practice. |
Sunday, April 16, 2023 9:54AM - 10:06AM |
F17.00008: The role of personal epistemology in student reasoning Drew J Rosen, MacKenzie R Stetzer, Beth A Lindsey, Mila Kryjevskaia A growing body of research has revealed that physics students may answer certain physics questions incorrectly even though they have demonstrated successful reasoning on analogous questions. Researchers are increasingly using dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR) as a theoretical lens to explain and predict student reasoning patterns on these tasks. While much of the work to date on student reasoning has primarily focused on cognitive domains, relatively little has been done to test the impact of factors like personal epistemology. Prior literature has suggested that a student's personal epistemology may impede their ability to access otherwise available knowledge and skills when solving physics questions. As part of a multi-institutional project aimed at better supporting student reasoning, we have developed and examined the validity of an instrument aimed at measuring personal epistemology through factor analysis techniques. Students' personal epistemology scores were then matched with their responses to physics questions to investigate the extent that students' personal epistemologies may impact reasoning on certain kinds of questions. In this talk, we present observed links between reasoning patterns and personal epistemology as measured by this instrument. |
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