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In physics and STEM we tend to teach in the same way across courses. The students watch the instructor solve problems, memorize the process, and regurgitate it later - all while under serious pressure to get good grades. This process can deter students from STEM, encourage cheating, and prevent deeper understanding. I wanted to find out what could contribute to a more enriched learning experience in STEM using feedback from students and teachers. By conducting surveys of students about their experiences with classes, teachers, and online tools I set out to gain a better understanding of what makes an effective and enjoyable STEM education. I will summarize survey results and go over methods to potentially improve the learning experience such as incorporating project-based assessments, offering exam revisions, implementing self-grading, and encouraging collaboration. 


AAPT SM 21

The Student Experience - How to Enrich STEM Education

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The sudden transition to remote instruction left many students struggling to fully engage with courses which had fewer opportunities for meaningful interpersonal interactions. In response, we formed “Learning Pods – online learning communities of small student groups connected through Slack and mentored in collaboration skills. Subsequently, Learning Pods became an organizing structure of the introductory calculus-based mechanics course. Features of the Learning Pod Intervention varied as we scaled up from courses with ~100 students to those with 300-500 students. Based on analysis of student survey questions, we present preliminary indicators of increased student self-efficacy and improved engagement with instructors and peers. Improved self-efficacy and engagement have been correlated with improved success and persistence, especially for students from groups underrepresented in physics. We observe that different implementations increased student self-efficacy to different degrees, and that instructor and TA engagement in mentoring effective collaboration lowered barriers for students’ engagement with TAs.

Facilitating Online Learning Communities in Large-Enrollment Introductory Physics Courses

We developed a number of digital tools to support teaching quantum mechanics. The idea behind that is main concepts of quantum mechanics are non-intuitive to an uninitiated student due to the lack of daily experience with quantum mechanics: The basis of intuition is experience. Therefore, teaching quantum mechanics with a support of numerical experiments for all main topics of quantum mechanics appears to be essential for an efficient and quick learning process. The numerical experiments are prepared using PYTHON computer codes and a graphical interface. Students and instructors can use the graphical interface to change parameters of the suggested numerical experiments or they can download, modify and run the codes on their personal computers. Finally, a website, gathering overall numerical experiments, was designed. It can be used by universities and institutions in their different educations.

Teaching quantum mechanics in an experiential learning and engaging environment

Computation has delivered many benefits to the teaching and learning of quantum mechanics. It increases students' engagement with the subject matter, enabling them to be doers as opposed to just thinkers or traditional problem solvers. In many cases, practices, tools and methods previously used only in research have been brought to the classroom, significantly enriching the class. In this presentation we will discuss multimodal techniques, some successfully used in atomic physics, to computation in quantum mechanics, including visual, numerical, and symbolic computation. We will present select activities and projects on large eigenvalue problems, scattering, and time-dependent dynamic evolution. Working examples will be given in Python but the templates should be adaptable to other platforms.

Multimodal computation in quantum mechanics

Many of us remember passively wading through a lengthy and esoteric derivation of the energy eigenstates of the harmonic oscillator, which we likely revisit only when teaching the topic. In contrast, a computational introduction engages students in a dynamic investigation that immediately produces visualizations in a process they can repeat ad infinitum for any number of potential energy functions. In this talk, I share my recent iteration of a junior-level Modern Physics course, for which I created a sequence of computational assignments based on published PICUP Exercise Sets, developed a new Exercise Set about x-ray crystallography, and implemented a revise-and-resubmit structure for assignment grading. I conclude with a discussion of assessment interviews I conducted after the course to examine the ways in which computation helped the students learn challenging quantum concepts, and discuss needs to address in future semesters.

Implementation and Assessment of Computation in a Modern Physics Course

I will describe a first attempt to build computation into the undergraduate quantum mechanics course at High Point University. In a spin first approach, students uncover the postulates of quantum mechanics entirely in the context of spin-1/2 degrees of freedom before developing position-space wave function technology needed to study the standard array of potential wells. This non-standard approach to teaching quantum mechanics is particularly well suited for the integration of computation. In addition to presenting several examples of how integrated computational exercises can aid in student understanding of key ideas in quantum mechanics, I will share some possible independent projects involving advanced topics which are accessible to students well versed in the basic computational methods used to investigate spin.

Integrating Computation into a Spin First Undergraduate Quantum Mechanics Course

This presentation will provide an overview of presentations that are available to those attending for use with their classes. The presentations are designed for students in grades 6-8, 9 – 12, and college introductory physics courses. Climate science challenges are presented in terms of thermodynamics/entropy changes that occur due to procuring and burning fossil fuels to produce electricity. Information about the Climate Reality Project will also be included.

A Thermodynamics Approach to Introducing the Climate Crisis

In this work, a numerical development for the supercontinuum (SC) generation is demonstrated by developing a fractional calculus model for a photonic crystal fibre of hexagonal design. The solutions are presented in the temporal and spectral way of the Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation (NLSE). The results show that, for a spectral development of the NLSE, great computational savings are obtained and the analysis of the phenomena that intervene in the generation of this non-linear effect is feasible.

Fractional Calculus Approach in Supercontinuum Generation in Photonic Crystal Fibers

This session shares three different approaches to make physics problem solving practice more group-worthy: Murder Mysteries, Escape Rooms, and Scrambles. All activities introduced are available to download and modify for free.

Group-Worthy Physics Challenges

The design goal of the IOLab was to create a high-quality data acquisition tool to bring physics experiments out of the formal laboratory space and into students’ daily lives. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a bittersweet outside factor to advancing this goal: Tens of thousands of students are now using IOLabs in their homes for remote introductory laboratory classes. The features of the system – particularly those that make it work for remote instruction - were developed over several years of coordination between software design, curriculum design, and assessment. The introductory laboratory classes that subsequently emerged at the University of Illinois use the IOLab as a bridge between informal investigation and formal experimentation. In this talk I will discuss how we used the IOLab’s features to blend remote and classroom learning in a hybrid instruction style pre-pandemic, and how this coordination has translated to fully-remote instruction.

Working together, apart, with IOLabs in remote introductory physics laboratories

Virtual reality (VR) technology continues to mature at a rapid clip, creating potential for its use as a means of administering "hands-on" physics lab curriculum in hybrid or remote learning contexts. This talk draws from experiences administering VR-enabled labs to classes of 120 students in a hybrid model and 37 students in a remote model to inform answers to key questions around use of VR in remote labs: What advantages does VR offer over traditional "flat" simulations? Do students recognize "hands-on" work done in an immersive 3D environment as being "real" science? How is collaboration between distant students affected by use of VR? What is the current and near-future feasibility of VR technology use in remote instruction? We argue that VR labs have a niche in the remote physics lab instructor's toolbox, and outline current and anticipated applications of VR to remote physics lab instruction.

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The Student Experience - How to Enrich STEM Education

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