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The absence of direct discussions about the intersections of science and society in classrooms reinforces the idea that physics is purely objective and removed from societal impact or influence. This messaging can justify students’ disengagement from social responsibility, leave them unprepared to use ethical reasoning in their careers, and isolate students who feel commitment to their communities. At Texas State University, we developed two units to scaffold student discussions around ethics in physics classrooms: a unit about The Manhattan Project (in Modern Physics) and a unit about the Thirty Meter Telescope (in Observational Astrophysics). This talk will discuss the motivation and development of the units, then share some emerging themes from the Manhattan Project implementation. Using video-recordings of classroom interactions, I will highlight group dynamics that limit and enhance students’ engagement, consider why these dynamics may have emerged, and discuss their implications for facilitating complex ethical reasoning among students.

AAPT SM 20

Facilitating Ethics Discussions in Physics Classrooms at Texas State University

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The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. 

Over 5000 diagnostic tests consisting of about 20 high-school-level mathematics problems were administered in part or in full to introductory physics students at four campuses of three large state universities; topics covered were trigonometry, algebra, geometry, and graphing. Despite substantial performance differences among the four population samples, response patterns were consistent; they showed error rates ranging from 20-80% on problems involving mathematical skills normally taken for granted by college physics instructors. Performance on algebra problems consistently declined when symbols were substituted for numerical coefficients. Both written and interview data indicated that many errors were due to difficulty in combining basic operations in more complex problems, or perhaps by simple "carelessness" in doing so. Despite the wide variety of diagnostic topics, results on a very small subset of items predicted overall scores with high accuracy. We will report initial results of testing an on-line instructional tool aimed at improving student performance.

Response Patterns by Introductory Physics Students on Mathematics Diagnostic Tests

In many universities, all quantum-mechanics based courses are intended to introduce to the student fundamental topics and theory that includes wave particle duality and obtaining exact analytical solutions to the Schrödinger equation for simple systems such as the hydrogen atom. The transition from a solvable quantitative Schrödinger equation-based model in the hydrogen atom to a more sophisticated qualitative model involving non-hydrogenic atoms and molecules introduces many misconceptions to students. Such misconceptions can become a major barrier to students’ capability of understanding and solving further analytical problems in quantum chemistry, throwing both the instructor and the student in a ‘threshold concept arena’. We show how computational chemistry can be integrated into a typical undergraduate quantum chemistry lecture curriculum to assist in learning nontrivial topics such as Franck Condon principle and Born Oppenheimer approximation.

Utilization of Computational Quantum Chemistry in Addressing Misconceptions and Threshold Concepts in Traditional Quantum Chemistry Curriculum

Communication is an important skill in all fields of STEAM learning environments, including physics lab courses. The AAPT Recommendations for the Undergraduate Physics Curriculum identify ‘communicating physics’ as one of six major learning outcome focus areas for undergraduate physics labs. But, to whom? Traditionally, physics classrooms (including labs) are a black-box where the learning process is shrouded from stakeholders such as policymakers, practitioners, and families. My research investigates the pedagogical method Letters Home (Lane, 2014), which provides students with the opportunity to communicate beyond the borders that constrain practical lab reports. In my implementation, the Letters Home method tasks students with writing letters to a non-physicist then gradually to a graduate student or a physics professor. We used the AAPT Recommendations to inform development of a coding scheme. However, the recommendations still contain ‘communicating physics’ within the boundaries of a black-box. In this talk, I will present about my implementation of Letters Home as a foothold into exploring the question, How can we develop writing activities that extend beyond the traditional borders of the classroom and communicate with all stakeholders? Lane, W. B. (2014). Letters home as an alternative to lab reports. The Physics Teacher, 52(7), 397-399.

Letters Home: Transcending the Boundary Between Lab and Family/Friends

Students find difficulty visualizing 3D concepts in our physics courses. In our introductory calculus-based physics and upper-level electricity and magnetism courses, students struggle to visualize electric and magnetic fields, electric flux, Gauss’s law, electromagnetic induction, three-dimensional integration, and the divergence theorem, to name a few of the E&M topics that are well suited for visualization using augmented reality. For example, when teaching Gauss’s law, the mathematical formalism tends to hide the geometrical meaning of Gauss’s law, more than explain it. Therefore, an AR hands-on visual representation can greatly help in rendering the concepts of flux through a surface or charge density in a given volume, so as to help students understand the physics behind it. In this poster presentation, we will demonstrate the AR applications and activities that we’ve developed and plan to use in our courses.

Developing Augmented Reality Modules to Teach Electromagnetism

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we completely transformed our two-course sequence of introductory physics for life science majors (IPLS) into the integrated lecture/studio format using biological phenomena to motivate the physics. Across both courses, we have created a suite of 54 active-engagement studios, interactive lectures, and assessment questions, all of which have been developed using the findings and best-practices from PER. This suite includes materials for many topics that are important for life science majors, but not part of the traditional introductory physics curriculum, including non-linear stress/strain, diffusion, chemical energy, and life at low Reynolds numbers. Now five years after the first complete implementation, the two-course sequence is running smoothly. In this talk, I will provide an overview of our journey from germination to realization.

A new IPLS course: Five years later

One goal of physics activities may be to develop student skills in designing experiments. Understanding the use of student design tasks can help instructors who want to use research-based approaches to create new activities. In this research, we analyzed student design actions in 66 research-based activities from 11 different curricula to determine the frequency of various design tasks that students were asked to perform. Our definitions of student design tasks were: 1) describing an experimental procedure invented by the student, 2) improving a previous experiment, 3) making a hypothesis, 4) choosing questions to investigate, and 5) designing, stating, inventing, or improving a mathematical or quantitative procedure.

Examining student design tasks in research-based activities

A “conflict thesis”, which claims a methodological, factual, and political conflict between science and religion [1], has led to stereotypes about the low competence of religious people in academic careers, especially in western contexts [2]. People with deeply held religious beliefs are aware of these negative stereotypes about them, which can lower their interest and performance in science [3]. In this study, we draw on survey data to examine the effect of spirituality and religious beliefs on physics identity and career choice.

The Effect of Spirituality and Religiousness on Physics Identity and Career Choice

There are as many ways to go about instructing a lab as there are teaching assistants. What we hope for our TAs to gain as lab instructors is to come into their own identity as teachers and the ability to effectively communicate scientific work. In this presentation, I will discuss material I have implemented to provide TAs the opportunity to practice their teaching skills while also benefiting from their teaching experience. One project was creating an instructor's guide to laboratories written by former TAs. Written as a refresher for TAs who already have familiarity with the laboratory course, the primary goal is to save them time and effort so that they can focus on the matter at hand: helping the students take as much as they can from the course. I will also discuss the use of supplemental videos that allow TAs and students to visualize portions of the lab.

Creating supplemental teaching material for teaching assistants

Compared to pedagogy in formal settings, comparatively little work has been done investigating techniques of pedagogy in informal learning environments. A 2016 study [1] addressed this issue, developing an observation-based model characterizing the pedagogical modes of volunteer instructors in an afterschool informal education program. Following the methodology of that study, we have observed and analyzed instructor pedagogy in a University of Colorado Boulder-based informal physics education program. The result is a model that both corroborates and expands upon the results of the 2016 study, more clearly accounting, e.g., for instructors’ varying objectives in the informal learning environment. We will describe study methodology and results, discuss the expanded model, and address application of the model in other informal learning environments.

A Refined Model for Characterizing Pedagogy in Informal Learning Environments

The Get the Facts Out (GFO) project is a joint effort between four national societies and the Colorado School of Mines to change the conversation around grade 7-12 physics, chemistry, and math teaching careers. We have developed the first ever set of research-based, user-tested STEM teacher recruitment materials. To do this and to better understand best practices around recruiting math and science teachers, GFO has a rigorous research arm. Our research includes the study of both student and faculty perceptions of the teaching profession including development of instruments to measure these. Finally, to measure the effectiveness of the project, we are engaging in a large-scale longitudinal study that includes annual collection of qualitative data from eighteen departments and quantitative data from another 60 departments. Here we will share resource updates and recent highlights of research results. This work is supported by NSF DUE-1821710 & 1821462.

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Facilitating Ethics Discussions in Physics Classrooms at Texas State University

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Response Patterns by Introductory Physics Students on Mathematics Diagnostic Tests

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