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As part of the Get the Facts Out project, we have developed the Perceptions of Teaching as a Profession in Higher Education better known as the PTaP.HE (P-taffy), which measures faculty’s perceptions of grade 7-12 teaching as a career choice. This spring we conducted a new reduced-basis factor analysis on version 2 of the instrument and found a substantial change in category structure from version 1. Here, we will share the new categories as well as present results from our national data sample which reveals themes in faculty thinking about the grade 7-12 teaching career. These results can help guide the improvement of physics teacher recruitment in colleges nationwide. This project is supported by NSF DUE-1821710.

AAPT SM 21

Factor analysis of the PTaP.HE

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faculty

teacher recruitment

factor analysis

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.

PERC SM 20

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?

technical paper

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.

Listen to internationally known plenary speakers, attend sessions, workshops, and special activities. Attending the virtual summer meeting is an excellent opportunity to share your expertise and learn from and network with leaders in the field.

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It can be difficult for introductory physics students to understand the nature of electric fields because electric fields are not tangible nor visible. With the intent of providing students the tools to help them understand electric fields, we conducted a study, via Zoom, in which we tested the efficacy of three technological learning tools in developing student understanding of electric fields. The tools, developed by our team, include a video lesson, an electric field simulator, and an online electric field game. The students in two sections of a second-semester, algebra-based physics course were each randomly assigned to use one of the three tools. All completed pre- and post-activity diagnostics including questions targeting the learning objectives, beliefs about physics, and learning preferences. We will discuss the results of our study and the implications on the development of future tools.

Assessing the efficacy of technological tools to teach electric fields

The introductory physics sequence at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology develops a common knowledge base for 500+ freshman students, with all majors required to complete the first two courses. In pursuit of enhancing our courses with active learning in a hybrid environment due to COVID-19 restrictions, we implemented iOLab-based exercises during the Winter and Spring quarters of the 2020/2021 academic year. The open-ended activities were designed to pique students’ intrinsic curiosity and help students develop more connections between theory and "how things work” through demos and experimental design. Students also identified opportunities to create value by exploring applications of sensors in the world around them. These skills directly relate to the students’ entrepreneurial mindset, which was assessed by a pre- and post-ESEMA survey. We also sought to understand the effectiveness and student perception of the iOLab in a hybrid setting through their written comments and attitudes from a post-StRIP survey.

Developing Entrepreneurial Mindset through iOLab-based Activities in Introductory Physics Courses

Because electric fields cannot be touched or seen, simulations are often utilized to build students' understanding of them by providing them with a visual representation of electric fields and the motion of test charges through them. We developed a game to address these challenges. The goal of the game is to guide a test charge through a racetrack using an electric field that the player creates. As a student plays the game, they will see dynamic electric field lines created by the charges they place on the screen, as well as the trajectory of test charges through the electric field. Our aim in the gamification of a more traditional electric field simulation is to improve motivation and engagement in the material. Both the game and the simulation that we built before it are built in JavaScript, so they will run on most browsers on a computer or mobile device.


Gamification of Electric Fields to Improve Students’ Understanding and Engagement

In this study of a large enrollment introductory physics course, I investigated students' use of free online resources (YouTube, Khan Academy, Chegg) and newly-implemented class resources since the Covid-19 transition to remote learning. In my mixed-methods approach, I surveyed and interviewed students on their perceptions and use of expanded course resources which include: pre-lecture module with introductory videos, quizzes with instructional feedback, tutorial assignment with low-stakes grading parameters, and demonstration videos. Students also engage with weekly activities similar to pre-Covid-19 but adapted to the remote setting, including synchronous remote lectures and active-learning recitations, asynchronous recitation quizzes as exam-like practice, and online homework assignments. The survey data suggest students value the expanded course resources as helpful to their learning, and report little use of solutions sites like Chegg. Despite increased accessibility of virtual meetings, students still do not engage frequently with course office hours or the University Learning Centers.

Resources in Introductory Physics: Multiple Modes of Engagement and Feedback

We examined the prevalence of rapid answer copying among university students completing online homework for an introductory level calculus-based physics course taught remotely during the COVID pandemic. We first compared the attempt duration distribution of 26 problems, between 42 students who self-reported as having completed the homework by themselves against the rest of the class. Significant differences were detected for 3 out of 26 problems. We then identified abnormally short problem attempts indicative of potential rapid answer copying, by fitting the attempt duration distribution of each problem with finite-mixture models, using mixtures of either normal or skewed distributions. We detected a significantly smaller fraction of short attempts from self-reporting students on only 3 out of 26 problems, and found no statistically significant difference in percentage correct of short attempts between the populations. In conclusion, our analysis did not find evidence indicating wide-spread rapid answer copying among students. We also explored differences in learning behavior between the two populations by applying process mining to the event logs of one of the homework learning modules, which reveals that some students may have copied answers after spending longer time or using multiple attempts on a given problem. However, this form of answer copying is also unlikely to be prevalent since the percentage correct on normal attempts are also similar between the two populations on most problems.

A data driven study of students' completion of online homework

This talk will introduce a modern Open Education Resources (OER) flipped classroom curriculum developed for an introductory algebra-based physics sequence. These resources were created by the Project BoxSand PER group at Oregon State University with support from OSU’s Ecampus. This curriculum is unique in its ground up design from hundreds of fine grain learning objectives, powerful built in research framework to which resources are coded, and suitability for both in person and remote delivery. The development process, curriculum examples, and how to access the resources (including direct LMS integration) will be presented. The currently available OER includes pre-lecture, lecture, and post-lecture activities. A laboratory curriculum with modern learning objectives, designed with remote learning in mind, will soon be available. OSU has partnered with Vernier to provide the OER lab manual with physical lab kits for rent or purchase. Other resources, including a sizeable question database will be available soon.

A Free, OER, PER-based, PER-focused Curriculum for Introductory Physics

Remote laboratory work has greatly expanded due to in part the recent global pandmeic. Many departments transitioned into remote learning without much previous experience with remote learning practices. I present here a study examening students social learning experiences in in-person and remote physics laboratories as they relate to their interactions with their peers and their instructors. I also examen their physics laboratory self-efficacy. These factors were compared using an analysis of variance to examen potential differences between groups. Remote students experienced weaker levels of connection to their peers and their instructors than their in-person counterparts. Remote students who connected with one another had lower self-efficacy than their in-person counterparts. Correlations between factors were also tested. I present findings of this study as well as recomendations for the implimentation of future virtual remote laboratory learning environments.

Building social networking and communities in remote physics laboratories

With the support of a PhysTEC Recruitment Grant, Bridgewater State University (BSU) is working with two of our feeder community colleges to provide Get the Facts Out (GFO) and early teaching experiences. Due to the pandemic our community college partners are 100% online and asynchronous. The asynchronous aspect makes it very difficult to reach the students, so we re-invent how to present GFO to the introductory physics classes. Our solution was to develop video homework problems that embedded parts of our GFO presentation. BSU’s TIR Allison Daubert developed the videos which feature students in the BSU’s Physics Education Group. The video homework problems are in a central youtube channel allowing for easy assignment by the community college professors. The community college professors assign the video homework as a graded part of the course assuring all the students view the videos.

Video Solution to GFO for Asynchronous Community Colleges Courses

Changing the conversation around the grade 7-12 teaching profession is at the core of the “Get the Facts Out” (GFO) campaign. To do so at institutions without explicit aim to recruit or train secondary teachers displays the potential reach of GFO itself. An example institution fitting that description is Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU): a private, aeronautical, engineering-focused university. Though strides are being made at ERAU to highlight pathways to secondary teaching, much potential remains in changing the conversation. This presentation will provide an expanded update to previous data collected, plans for spreading GFO-related materials, and pressing obstacles.

GFO implementation at an aeronautical university

There are numerous benefits to taking undergraduate students to AAPT meetings for the students themselves, their professors, and the AAPT organization as a whole.

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Factor analysis of the PTaP.HE

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Assessing the efficacy of technological tools to teach electric fields

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