United States

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA) were used in our sophomore-level courses on classical mechanics and electricity and magnetism, respectively, in 2020-21. Both courses used pedagogical methods to encourage interactive, engaged learning. The assessment results and students’ course grades are compared. The result shows that the assessment tools help to diagnose weak topics in student’s command of concepts. The effect of the pandemic of COVID-19 on students’ learning is discussed.

AAPT SM 21

Using research-based assessment tools in intermediate physics courses

intermediate physics courses

bema

assessment

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

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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.

Factor analysis of the PTaP.HE

The Get the Facts Out project, which is entering its fourth year of funding, has an aggressive research arm that studies the effectiveness of every resource produced by the project as well as perceptions of students and perceptions of faculty at over 50 U.S. institutions. In this presentation we will share several exciting results from the project this year including a blog article that went viral, the impact on students as a result of simply sharing the facts with colleagues, and some critical differences between the challenges within mathematics, chemistry and physics departments. Finally, we will share a couple of new resources including professional STEM teacher recruitment videos and A Teacher’s Life by the Numbers. This project is supported by NSF DUE-1821710 & 1821462

The Latest and Greatest from Get the Facts Out

A few years ago, the IUPUI Physics Department decided to introduce computational methods in its undergraduate curriculum to enhance student learning outcomes and engagement. The overall goal is for our graduates to consider computations as a complement to traditional analytic methods, and to develop the judgment and intuition to use a judicious mix of computational and analytic methods to investigate a problem. Since the project is in its infancy, the onset of the pandemic required some adjustments to the implementation plans. In this talk, I will describe our efforts to get buy-in from every faculty member in the department, training faculty members who were not facile with computations, implementing computations in every course, and developing an assessment instrument. I will also discuss some on-going and future work that is supported by an NSF-IUSE grant to advance the goals of the project and how the pandemic provided some unexpected silver linings.

Normalizing Computations across the Physics Curriculum

Computational modeling can provide a hands-on interactive component in a course that is otherwise entirely Zoom-based. In the introductory, calculus-based course, students can build and explore principle-based models of both hypothetical and real-world systems. They can explore the effect of varying parameters, and can construct models to help determine whether videos of physical phenomena are real or faked. However, the challenges of teaching basic computational ideas to students with no previous computational experience are also magnified in this environment. Creating pre-lab activities to teach basic concepts; ensuring that computational activities are adequately scaffolded, and convincing students to interact with each other in breakout rooms have proven central to success.

Integrating computation in a remote introductory course

There is a national push to better prepare our physics students in computation. How did these efforts translate to the rapid adaptation to virtual learning in response to the pandemic? In this talk, I will outline 1) computational tools that enabled remote learning of computation in my classes and 2) modifications to how I traditionally integrate computation to address the accommodation and empathy necessary as the students navigate the uncertainty of the pandemic. I will discuss using Jupyter and JupyterHub for various courses, Gradescope for real-time code feedback, and CodeCollab for collaborative coding.

Computational tools and humane instincts: computation in a pandemic

This study investigates what college-level and high-school-level variables significantly predict FMCE (Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation) pretest scores and whether differences in these variables explain gender differences observed in FMCE pretest scores. The sample consists of students attending a large eastern land-grant university in the US who are enrolled in the introductory calculus-based mechanics class (N=1060). Variables examined include college performance, high school preparation, and non-academic variables such as sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and personality. Correlation analysis and linear regression were used to understand relations between these variables. 



What does the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation pretest measure?

Practice exams with immediate feedback and video solutions are among the highest rated learning resources by students taking introductory physics at the University of Illinois. These ratings align with a research showing the positive impact of formative assessment and the testing effect. Despite this alignment, data on our student use of practice exams suggests a majority of students are missing the most important benefits. In particular, the large fraction of students choosing to complete their first practice exam less than 24 hours before the exam, suggests they are primarily being used for cramming. During the Spring 2021 semester we introduced a “mock” proctored exam one week prior to the actual exam. We look at how performance on the mock exam impacted student predictions, preparation and performance on the actual midterm exam. Our results show that despite the valuable formative assessment available from the mock exam, students were resilient in their dependence on cramming. 


Practice exams impact on student exam preparation and performance

We present a qualitative analysis of twenty-six interviews about computation in introductory mechanics courses. These interviews are part of a longer term project to develop an assessment protocol for computation in introductory physics. Interviewees were drawn from either: introductory physics, research on computation within physics, or an industrial physics career that involves computation. The interviews were coded into twenty-seven different nodes and sub-codes within each node to concentrate and differentiate between node details. We find that an assessment should not be language specific, even though Python is a favorite. The computational level at which interviewees expect students to have when they exit the course varies immensely. Some interviewees have a goal of getting students thinking about or feeling better about computational practices without performing computational practices themselves. Other interviewees have a goal of students solving many problems computationally, the capability to use multiple programming environments, and writing programs from scratch.

Computational Assessment in Introductory Physics: Codes From Qualitative Interview Analysis

As part of a project to develop a written instrument for assessing learning assistants (LAs) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in the context of questioning (PCK-Q), we are experimenting with alternate question formats. Previously developed and validated free-response questions serve as the basis for a new question format. This new format consists of Likert-style answer choices that require the LAs to assess a scenario where a student has a misunderstanding, evaluate the situation, and score potential LA responses. The instrument will examine an LAs ability to identify appropriate responses that provide evidence of PCK-Q in the classroom. 


Using Ranking Question to Assess Students Assistants' PCK-Q

We report on the development of a written assessment designed to analyze pedagogical content knowledge in the context of questioning (PCK-Q). We discuss the process of analyzing and coding classroom videos and writing and testing a written assessment. The classroom observations have first been coded using a coding scheme that analyzes levels of questioning in an inquiry-based classroom. A written instrument was then developed based on the classroom videos, administered to student teaching assistants (TAs and LAs) and compared with the video results to validate the written instrument. We report on the coding scheme and the validation of results as part of this ongoing project.

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Using research-based assessment tools in intermediate physics courses

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