Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2023
Volume 68, Number 3
Las Vegas, Nevada (March 5-10)
Virtual (March 20-22); Time Zone: Pacific Time
Session G34: Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution - Undergraduate Diversity and EducationDiversity Education Focus Undergrad Friendly
|
Hide Abstracts |
Sponsoring Units: FED Chair: Susan Blessing, Florida State University Room: Room 226/227 |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 11:30AM - 12:06PM |
G34.00001: Prize for a Faculty Member for Research in an Undergraduate Institution Winner: Rae Robertson-AndersonThe Whole is More than the Sum of its Parts Invited Speaker: Rae M Robertson-Anderson Composite materials - comprising biopolymers, macromolecules and particles of different sizes, topologies, and stiffnesses - exhibit emergent mechanics, dynamics and structures that cannot be predicted or engineered from the properties of the individual components. Researchers with different backgrounds, career stages, disciplinary interests, skin colors, gender identities and life experiences - working together - advance and democratize knowledge at a much more rapid pace than working alone. These truths have shaped my research and education goals which focus on bridging gaps and scales and bringing together disparate components to build materials with emergent properties, instruments with new capabilities, knowledge at the interface between scientific disciplines, programming to prepare undergraduates for 21st century careers, and inclusive scientific communities with diverse voices and narratives. My talk will elaborate on some of the key discoveries and initiatives that I have worked on to advance these goals, and the amazing community of undergraduates and collaborators who have made this work possible. |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 12:06PM - 12:18PM |
G34.00002: Through the Looking Glass: A Quantitative Study Investigating Students' Emotions by Gender and Sense of Belonging in Introductory Physics Courses. Alia Hamdan, Sanlyn Buxner Diversity and inclusion continue to be fundamental topics in physics education research. Very few studies have looked at academic emotions and those that have mainly focused on test anxiety. This study examined the relationship between learning-related emotions measured using a modified Achievement emotions Questionnaire (AeQ), gender, and sense of belonging (SoB) in physics classrooms for introductory physics students. We sampled 166 students among which 44.7% were female, 51.2% were male, and 1.87% were gender non-conforming. Of these students, 75 had a high measured SoB while 91 students had a low SoB. A confirmatory factor analysis was used to test a model of the relationship between learning-related emotions, gender (self-identified), and sense of belonging. The overall model indicated good fit (χ2 (436) = 1139, p < 0.001, CFI = 0.825). Independent t-tests revealed no differences in emotions between groups of students of different genders. Independent t-tests revealed statistically significant differences(p < 0.001), except for Joy (p=0.0018) between students’ emotions in groups with high and low SoB. Cohen’s d values ranged from 0.495( Joy) to -1.27 (Anxiety). These results indicate that students with low SoB experience different academic emotions than those with high SoB. This study reveals that emotions are an important factor to consider in creating more inclusive physics spaces. |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 12:18PM - 12:30PM |
G34.00003: ADAPT: A tool for quantifying diversity in physics textbooks Tai Xiang, Will Gray, Janice Hudgings An often cited factor for the continued under-representation of people of color and women in physics is the lack of representational diversity present in the field. In this work, we develop an automated, Python-based tool that is capable of quantitatively analyzing the names and demographics of scientists mentioned in the chapters and indices of physics textbooks, thus enabling publishers, authors, and users to quickly identify the demographic composition of these texts. This tool is then used to determine whose work is mentioned in the set of textbooks utilized in a representative four-year undergraduate physics major curriculum, as well as a collection of ten commonly used introductory physics textbooks. The aforementioned sample analyses reveal that the examined texts display an overwhelming focus on work attributed to White men of European, British, and North American descent. These results indicate an urgent need for physics educators, as well as textbook publishers, authors, and adopters, to work in tandem to better reflect the broad diversity of scientists working in this field within physics texts. |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 12:30PM - 12:42PM |
G34.00004: Evolution of Physics Education through Phys-TikTok Hashini Mohottala, Marcus D SantaMaria, William H Downey, Rohan T Jacob, Hailey M Martinez, Mitchell D Hart, Carla P Silva, Ravindu I Karunaratne Tiktok has been a popular app on social media, especially among teens, young adults, and college-age kids. Creators on this site post short videos that grab the attention of the audience. These videos contain fun content and deliver a direct message to the audience. The audience tends to retain the messages through Tiktok better than those sent via long YouTube videos. Now, how about PHYS-TikToks? We tried TikTok in one of our introductory level physics courses, a course dedicated to teaching mechanics in the human body. Physical therapy, Sports medicine, and Exercise Science majors require mastery of at least two physics courses, one linking the human body with mechanics and the other with electricity. The majority of the students in this class have little to no exposure to physics before college but are very motivated to learn physics and very enthusiastic about the subject. We set up a group of volunteers to produce PHYS-TikTok videos focusing on each new physics topic discussed in the class. The class widely benefited from the videos, and more students volunteered to design them. While each video contained an important message, we kept the videos short, fun, and most importantly educational. |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 12:42PM - 12:54PM |
G34.00005: Pandemic, Physics Enrollment and Current Needs Samina S Masood, Alishpa Masood Virtual mode of teaching and learning became the only mode of education during pandemic. This shift in teaching modality led to modifications in learning outcomes, faculty involvement and class requirements. Pandemic, along with all its outcomes, has reduced students' interest to attend face-to-face classes and encouraged to look at more options in the choice of subjects. Now there is a need to develop courses which can attract students to classrooms, where they enjoy class engagements and prefer to attend face-to-face classes. Due to the all positive and negative consequences of pandemic, the current trends in physics require to develop probably more inter-disciplinary and applied courses in teaching to attract students back into physics. |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 12:54PM - 1:06PM |
G34.00006: Ungrading A Modern Physics Course Edwin F Greco In this talk we will discuss efforts to ungrade a modern physics course in an effort to improve intrinsic motivation and learning outcomes. The course was composed primarily of physics majors and structured around three one-on-one conferences with students spread across the semester. During these conferences students reported their motivation for succeeding in the course, their learning goals, proposed activities to support these goals, and developed an assessment plan to determine their grade in the course. Throughout the course, the instructor provided formative and summative feedback as well as a variety of active learning activities. In place of a final exam, students showcase their work during a poster session. We will discuss grade distributions, student course evaluations, and results from the Quantum Mechanical Concept Inventory. |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 1:06PM - 1:18PM |
G34.00007: Investigating how physics programs take up to a collaborative and data-informed approach to change Diana Sachmpazidi, Chandra Turpen, Robert P Dalka As calls for increased accountability influence institutional practices, a cultural facet that has received increased attention is the culture of assessment. In this project, we study the change process enacted by local Departmental Action Teams (DATs) resulting from physics faculty members' participation in the Departmental Leadership Action Institutes (DALIs). We developed case studies of three DALI-active physics programs. We investigate cultural shifts by following these programs for over a year, collecting data from multiple sources. We document the departments’ dominant culture around the use of data and how the emerging microculture within the DAT is situated within that dominant culture. We find that past data collection efforts were a primary responsibility of a single person, rarely becoming the focus of joint attention. Whenever data received joint attention, it was approached in a cursory way without meaningfully informing collective change efforts. However, we found that within the DATs, data played a significant role in understanding the root causes of the problem. Finally, we found that a broad set of DAT stakeholders engaged in extensive collective discussions around the design of data collection and interpretation of findings. |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 1:18PM - 1:30PM |
G34.00008: Computational thinking and specifications grading in an introductory calculus-based mechanics course at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Jorge A Munoz, Jose L Banuelos, Eunja Kim, Ramon J Ravelo, Yun-Pil Shim We describe the course structure and pedagogical material developed for a calculus-based introductory mechanics course at The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) that uses coding exercises and computational thinking to introduce students to real-life applications of mechanics, particularly in sports science, and to build intuition about the use of calculus. No coding experience was required nor assumed. The course used specifications grading and the course elements were gamified; it provided incentives for the students to self-organize and engage in social learning, as well as team coding projects that relied on problem-based learning. The course was evaluated using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey and by comparing the performance of the students with previous iterations of the course. |
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 1:30PM - 1:42PM |
G34.00009: Micromagnetic simulations for incorporating computational methods into the physics curriculum Martin Lonsky, Martin Lang, Sam Holt, Swapneel Amit Pathak, Robin Klause, Tzu-Hsiang Lo, Marijan Beg, Hans Fangohr, Axel Hoffmann Computational methods have become an indispensable tool in modern physics research. As a consequence, college-level physics curricula contain a growing volume of specialized computational courses. A complementary approach is given by embedding computational topics into courses that are traditionally centered around either theoretical or experimental contents. Here, we present a successful implementation of the latter strategy in an elective course on magnetic materials and applications, where the Ubermag micromagnetic simulation software package is used by students to solve numerical problems that are linked to current research activities in the field of magnetism. We argue that, by letting students work on well-defined group projects and thereby following the technology-enabled active-learning approach, instructors can facilitate a more in-depth exploration of the course contents. In detail, we demonstrate that the combination of micromagnetics as a topical subject and Jupyter notebooks as an interactive computational tool to run Python code provides a useful approach to incorporating computational contents into an established course. Moreover, we also touch on topics such as software installation challenges and interactivity. Finally, we put our case study into the context of discussions about the need for more computational-focused physics curricula in higher education. |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700