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Learning Assistants (LAs) are undergraduate STEM students who participate in a pedagogy course and facilitate active learning among their peers in a variety of courses. Much of the existing research on LA programs focuses on the impact on the students taking courses with LAs, or on course transformation. In addition to this, we look at the impact on the LAs themselves, as students. We asked LAs in physics, other sciences, and math to reflect on how their LA experience has affected them, through interviews with fellow LAs and free-response surveys. We analyze these qualitative data to identify emerging themes. LAs found that their LA experiences had impacts on their conceptual understanding, metacognition, time management, confidence about public speaking and working with fellow students, and relationships with professors.

PERC SM 20

How the Learning Assistant Experience Impacts Learning Assistants as Students

metacognition

learning assistants

qualitative

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.


AAPT SM 20

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. 

poster

Join us in exploring emergent themes in PER as a scholarly endeavor and as a research community!  Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?
Following the lead of AAPT for the summer meeting, PERC 20/20 was virtual. Enjoy browsing the content.

Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?

The first two semesters of introductory calculus-based physics at Anonymous University are taught in two parallel formats: a flipped section (taught in a SCALE-UP-style active learning classroom, replacing lecture and recitation) and a traditional lecture section. To assess the influence on these formats on student performance and retention, we analyzed a data set of over 1000 students who took the traditional and/or flipped introductory courses in 2013-15, and tracked them longitudinally through their subsequent physics and engineering courses. Comparing grades in select later courses, initial results suggest that students who successfully completed the flipped version of Physics I received higher grades, while taking flipped Physics II is associated with lower grades. However, the full picture is more complicated. A greater fraction of the students who take flipped Physics II go on to take advanced courses, which suggests that this course with more active learning is associated with higher overall retention in physics and related fields.

Longitudinal impact of flipped and traditional introductory physics courses

Physics laboratory classes offer great potential for learning, often in ways that are distinct and complementary to theory-focused courses. However, there are relatively few research-based assessments that are suitable for use in an upper-division physics laboratory course. Our group has created a new set of research-based assessments for measuring a central aspect of laboratory learning: modeling. The assessments, known as the Modeling Assessment for Physics Laboratory Experiments (MAPLE), are computer-based surveys with two parts. The first part is a ``choose your own adventure, while the second part consists of standard coupled multiple response items. There are three surveys in MAPLE, each contextualizing modeling within different experimental apparatus: a pendulum, an op-amp circuit, and a laser incident on two polarizers. I present the development process and theoretical foundations of MAPLE, describe the assessments themselves, and discuss how they can be used to measure and improve laboratory learning.

MAPLE, the Modeling Assessment for Physics Laboratory Experiments (PERC)

Student assistants (SA), including graduate and undergraduate teaching/learning assistants, are pivotal to non-traditional physics instruction in large classrooms. Despite the importance and necessity of SAs, little is known about SAs' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and its impact on students learning. We are particularly interested in SAs PCK of questioning (PCK-Q) skills as that may be key to effective SA-student interaction. Our goal is to design and validate a written instrument to measure PCK-Q. Based on video analysis of SA-student interactions in an inquiry-based, introductory physics class, we are developing and validating open-ended questions for this instrument. The questions are tested on SAs, and their answers, in conjunction with analysis of their PCK-Q from video data, are used for question revision and instrument redesign. Once developed, we will use the instrument to study the impact of SAs PCK-Q on college students conceptual understanding of physics and critical thinking skills.

Development of an Instrument to Measure Student Assistants’ PCK-Q

  Within the last 15 years, computational thinking (CT) has emerged as a focal point of K-12 education. A plethora of studies have outlined the practices involved when students and teachers engage in CT, and these works discuss the topic for a variety of disciplines, academic levels, and research purposes. In this work, we present our process of navigating the field of existing CT practices. We have established a framework that is specific to the computationally-integrated high school physics context, where students use minimally working code to construct models of physical phenomena. From a total of nine previous scholarly works, we have identified fourteen CT practices that are applicable to the introductory physics classroom. This work will provide a foundation for exploring high school students perceptions of computational thinking.

Navigating Computational Thinking Frameworks for Introductory Physics Courses (PERC)

Physics has greatly impacted society, both in solving problems and perpetuating harm. Yet we rarely train physics students to grapple with their responsibilities to society by facilitating conversations about ethical issues. We developed and collected classroom video of a unit on the development of the atomic bomb. Here, we analyze students' small group interactions to reveal factors that enable and limit their engagement. Enabling factors include: (a) curricular materials that elicit students' opinions, (b) opportunities for students to push each other to engage with the content, and (c) instructor facilitation that further pushes and validates student reasoning. Limiting factors include: (a) students' discomfort around inexperience with ethical reasoning in physics, (b) students' anticipation of their lack of agency in the physics community, and (c) students' projections of their lack of agency in a historical context due to their race and gender. We consider the implications of these factors for instruction.

"I'm not that important": Barriers and bolsters to student agency during conversations about the intersections of physics and ethics

The American Physical Society calls for improving the diversity of physics by supporting an inclusive culture that encourages women and people of color to become physicists. Evidence shows that a major barrier to pursuing a career in physics or any other STEM discipline is passing the introductory physics course. We investigated the intersectional nature of racism, sexism, and classism in inequities in student rates of earning a non-passing grade (d, f, or withdrawal; DFW) using a quantitative critical framework. The analyses examined DFW rates for students in LA and non-LA supported physics courses at a Hispanic Serving Institution. Results identified large differences across intersecting identities. Controlling for instructors, LAs were found to be associated with decreases in DFW rates across all demographic groups.

A critical examination of DFW rates in LA supported physics courses

In redesigning the Modern Physics Lab at Strive University, where its purpose was in developing writing skills. We also implemented the pedagogical method Letters Home which offers students the ability to practice communication in a form of letters to experts and non-experts. We used the AAPT guidelines to develop a coding scheme with 8 categories. And used a linguistic analysis software program called LIWC to assess the datas language variables authenticity, clout, tone, and analytics. This case study investigates 6 students completion of 6 writing assignments (letters and reports) to a real audience. Our results indicate 6 of the 8 coding categories appear in at least 50% of the data. Also, there are similarities in artifacts' analytics, and authenticity scores were double for artifacts to non-experts than experts. We concluded our coding scheme characterizes physics communication, and the similarities between letters and lab reports may be due to our curriculum redesign.

Comparative Analysis of Letters and Reports in an Upper-Division Lab

Students positions within the social network of a physics classroom have been shown to correlate with students sense of belonging, performance, and persistence in physics. Current research in PER aims to understand how different types of active learning classrooms promote the development of students social networks. In this work, we examine how these networks develop in introductory physics labs where there is typically ample space and freedom for students to interact with their peers and build a community of learners. We explore the effectiveness of using video to capture information about student networks in this setting using two distinct methods of video coding. We find that these methods are robust and offer complementary information about students' social networks. We also present preliminary data exploring how the topologies of these networks evolve over time.

Connecting the dots: Student social networks in introductory physics labs

We discuss an investigation of student difficulties with concepts related to the many-particle stationary state wavefunction for a system of non-interacting fermions or bosons in cases in which the many-particle stationary state wavefunction can be written as the product of the spatial and spin parts. The investigation was carried out in advanced quantum mechanics courses by administering free-response and multiple-choice questions and conducting individual interviews with students. We find that students share many common difficulties related to these concepts. Many students struggled to write a many-particle stationary state wavefunction consistent with the symmetrization requirements for the system, i.e., a completely antisymmetric wavefunction for a system of fermions or a completely symmetric wavefunction for a system of bosons. We discuss the common difficulties pertaining to these concepts that can be used as a guide to develop research-validated learning tools.

Investigating Student Understanding of the Many-Particle Wavefunction for a System of Identical Particles

Diagrams are ubiquitous in STEM. These diagrams vary from problem solving tools (like force diagrams) to ways to visualize information and concepts (like a cell diagram or ATP cycle) or understand an equation or data set (like graphs). I will describe the two theories - affordance and visual attention and I will present several cases from the literature and my own research showing how these theories are lenses for understanding student difficulties with diagrams. In addition, I will present data from a set of experiments my group has done that examines prior student knowledge and its effect on diagram use and visual attention within images of fluid flow through pipes. This data illustrates that, while current STEM diagrams have a lot of room for improvement as instructional tools, designing improvements for these diagrams will be complex.

Visual Attention and Affordance Lenses for: Understanding Student Diagram Use and Designing Improved Instruction of Fluid Dynamics in a Physics for Life Science Class

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How the Learning Assistant Experience Impacts Learning Assistants as Students

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Longitudinal impact of flipped and traditional introductory physics courses

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