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Active learning has been shown to be more effective than passive lecture methods, but more work must be done to understand what mechanisms lead to effective active learning environments. The first step in understanding the mechanisms of active learning pedagogies is to establish a vocabulary with which to characterize them. One such method we have used is the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS), which codes student and instructor activities in two minute intervals. These profiles give us a picture of what kinds of activities are occurring in the classroom with the implementation of a given pedagogy. We have gathered COPUS profiles for six active learning pedagogies in physics. We discuss the individual characteristics for each pedagogy and present results from latent profile analyses.

AAPT SM 20

Characterizing Active Learning Environments in Physics using COPUS

latent profile analysis

active learning

Join AAPT and Physics Educators worldwide in developing and strengthening your professional connections by attending the 2021 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting. AAPT meetings are a great way to reflect on your teaching, recommit to best practices and re-energize your career with new research, products, and techniques.

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AAPT SM 21

technical paper

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. The program featured plenary speakers, sessions, workshops and many special activities.

For more information please visit the 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting page at: https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/SM2020/index.cfm.


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. 

One argument for keeping the physics GRE is that it can help applicants who might otherwise be missed in the admissions process stand out. In this work, we evaluate whether this claim is supported by physics graduate school admissions decisions. We used admissions data from five PhD-granting physics departments over a 2-year period to see how the fraction of applicants admitted varied based on their physics GRE scores. We compared applicants with low GPAs to applicants with higher GPAs and applicants from large undergraduate universities to applicants from smaller undergraduate universities. We find that for applicants who might otherwise have been missed (e.g. have a low GPA or attended a small school) having a high physics GRE score did not seem to increase the applicant’s chances of being admitted to the schools. However, having a low physics GRE score seemed to penalize otherwise competitive applicants.

The Physics GRE does not help "overlooked" applicants

Modern wireless sensor technology coupled with integrated programming tools allow students to measure characteristics of the complex motion of falling chain systems and compare them to predictions created by their Blockly computer code. Because the data collection only takes a few seconds, this can easily be converted to a distance learning activity by providing students with the data files, software, and lab handouts. Programming techniques allow for accurate predictions to be made by introductory students about systems that would otherwise be too complex. We will look at the motion of a chain draped over a pulley and the force of a dropped chain striking the ground. The labs are appropriate for AP and introductory college physics classes. A link to student lab handouts, teacher guides, and sample data files will be provided.

Measuring and Modelling the Motion of a Chain

This session will dive into strategies to help promote a vibrant SPS chapter or club. Whether you are starting a new chapter, reviving a dormant chapter or wanting to explore opportunities to elevate your current chapter activities, this talk is for you. We will focus on the motivation and engagement of your students, and how to leverage resources from a local, regional and national level in efforts to help your SPS chapter flourish.

Elevate Your SPS Chapter

Science Cafés as an informal collaborative activity for professional learning.

At one point in March 2020, many instructors of introductory lab courses had to perform a magic trick, transitioning their courses from in-person, hands-on lessons to distance-learning. Portland State University uses a quarter system, and this transition was achieved in a couple weeks between the end of the Winter and the beginning of the Spring terms. While Winter term was effectively still all in-class, Spring term became a fully remote course. The topics covered in our Spring term are waves, optics, and thermodynamics. We designed a curriculum using simulations resembling the in-class labs and a term long student project. The project highlighted experimental design, modeling, and measurement uncertainty. We asked students to pick their own topic and work with tools they had at home. We present our transformed course curriculum and preliminary research results on the effect of the new curriculum and environment on student attitudes.

Transitioning to a fully remote one-term introductory lab in two weeks: Early results

The acoustic impedance is an important quantity in characterizing the behavior of an acoustic system. The acoustic impedance of musical instruments determines the instrument’s response to excitation, reveals resonance frequencies, and shows which notes can be played. While the acoustic impedance is easy to calculate for simple shapes, it is very complicated to do so for the shapes of real musical instruments. This talk outlines an interactive method of calculation of the acoustic impedance of an arbitrary shape of an axially symmetric air column by approximating the air column by a series of cylindrical elements. We demonstrate the feasibility of the method by comparing the iterative result with the closed form solution for air columns of simple shape. Moreover, we discuss the calculation of the acoustic impedance of a trumpet-like instrument and show how different parts of the instrument affect its acoustic behavior.

Iterative Calculation of the Acoustic Impedance of a Trumpet-Like Musical Instrument

Since 2013 I have run a multiple-day, focused summer outreach program. The goal of the program is to dispel biases and show junior high and high school aged girls that they have the ability and opportunity to become scientists. The event is designed to give approximately 16 young women an intense, multi-day experience. The small size of the group and the length of the activity allows them to understand and perform in-depth activities. Insights I have gained about successfully running this type of activity will be discussed.

BYU/UVU-GAL: A Focused Outreach Activity for Young Women

Because electric fields cannot be touched or seen, simulations are often utilized to build students' understanding of them by providing them with a visual experience of electric fields and the motion of test charges through them. The objective of the simulation is to improve students’ qualitative understanding of how electric fields are impacted by the charges around them by creating a dynamic representation of the electric field lines, field vectors, equipotential lines, and the voltage created by the charges on screen. After creating a charge configuration, students can observe the motion of test charges through the electric field. The simulation was built in JavaScript so it will run on most browsers on a computer or mobile device. The simulation is intended to be used by college students taking introductory physics courses. A study of the impact on students' understanding and attitude will be analyzed in future work.

Dynamic Simulation to Help With the Understanding of Electric Fields

Interpreting and understanding the way students use and understand the mathematics used in physics is a central theme in Physics Education Research. Physical phenomena described by partial differential equations (PDEs) provide a promising context to study how students combine physics and mathematics. An example is the description of heat flow and temperature distribution in a one-dimensional rod, which can be described by the (1D) heat equation, together with an initial condition (IC), and boundary conditions (BCs). In this contribution, we present data from an interview study where we gave students the mathematical description of a system (PDE, IC and BCs) together with the analytical solution. We asked to describe the time evolution of the system, both in mathematical and physical terms. Our analysis shows that students’ reasoning is mainly mathematical with little reference to the underlying physics and that most students do not connect their mathematical statements to physical processes.

Relating solutions to the heat equation to the underlying physics

First, a fully comprehensive lab-manual for physics-I (kinematics) online-class was developed by using video-analysis and simulations. Only open educational resources (OER) were used to develop the lab manual. New lab manuals for ten experiments were written to investigate important basic concepts of kinematics class. Online lab classes are done synchronous format (at regular meeting time) online-live. During online meetings, the instructor work on at least two shared windows simultaneously one for writing and explanation (use the tablet mode of a dual-mode laptop) and one to access the lab manual. The instructor works with the students to collect the data by using virtual tools and demonstrate further data analysis, graphing, curve-fitting, calculations, and error analysis with the MS-Excel software package. Finally, students were required to compile a full lab report at a scientific standard and submitted to the learning-management-system (LMS) via plagiarism-checker. The learning outcome was analyzed by quizzes and exams.

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The Physics GRE does not help "overlooked" applicants

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Characterizing Active Learning Environments in Physics using Latent Profile Analysis