United States

Swarmnotes is a new strategy for note-taking and coaching in an online classroom environment, in which students and the instructor collaboratively edit an online whiteboard. In this talk, we will demonstrate the logistics of Swarmnotes and demonstrate several uses of this flexible tool including Peer Instruction with multiple-choice, open-ended, or draw-a-diagram formats; handouts with gaps; derivations in which students take turns doing the next step; and notating-the-notes during and after class.

AAPT SM 21

Swarmnotes for Live Collaborate Note-taking: Logistics and Uses

educational technology

collaboration

active learning

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technical paper

This presentation details the potential that counterspaces—safe spaces for minoritized groups in physics—have to support students’ persistence in physics. Focussing on undergraduate and graduate learning environments, I describe attributes of a counterspace for minoritized students in physics, and the positive identity resources (relational, ideational and material) students access through it. I will discuss the usefulness of Social Network Analysis to facilitate our understanding of how resources flow through networked relationships established in these spaces, and the affordances and constraints of institutionally-supported counterspaces in physics.

Networks of support for minoritized students in physics

We will discuss our approach to presenting physics as a relevant and engaging discipline to high school students with the constraint of not having participants on our campus. For our outreach program, our goal is to have students build, test, and troubleshoot projects that increase their confidence, present physics as an applied subject, and of course increase their interest in physics. The lack of in-person events makes fulfilling the hands-on element a particular challenge. We designed and implemented two Saturday physics experiences for high school students. Components for the projects were mailed to participants. One benefit to this approach over in-person events was that participants “attended” the event from locations far from our campus. We will discuss design considerations for doing outreach over video conference and the activities we developed.

Informal science for high school students over video conference

In a traditional classroom, the student’s learning is assessed by using three or four exams in a given semester. With standards based grading, the learning is broken down into smaller more manageable learning objectives. Students can be assessed on these learning objectives at multiple different times throughout the semester. As a student understand improves, their grade also improves. Older assessments have less weight in determining a student’s grade. This presentation will discuss success, challenges, and software used to implement standard based grading in an introductory physics course.

Using Standards-based Grading in an Online Physics Course

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic there was an increasing trend in the number of students enrolling in online courses. The flexibility of these courses make them an attractive option, particularly for non-traditional students. This presentation will detail a project at the University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College to establish an online introductory astronomy course for non-majors. The motivation and methodology for the study will be presented along with an assessment of learning gains compared to a similar, concurrently run face-to-face course.

The Effectiveness of Online Education for Introductory Astronomy

Dual Process Theories of Reasoning suggest that humans reason using System 1 (heuristic) and System 2 (analytic) thinking processes. This research seeks to develop interventions that help introductory undergraduate physics students recognize reasoning inconsistencies and activate System 2 thinking effectively to override initial incorrect responses. In a prior study (Kryjevskaia et al., 2014), screening and target questions aimed to identify students with relevant content knowledge who nevertheless relied on System 1 thinking when answering the target question. In the current study, “intervention” and “consistency” questions were added with the intent of alerting students to their reasoning inconsistencies. Students who indicated that their answers were inconsistent were presented with another opportunity to answer the target question.

Kryjevskaia, M., Stetzer, M. R., & Grosz, N. (2014). Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research, 10(2), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.10.020109

This study is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DUE 615418.

Interventions Designed to Help Students Recognize and Overcome Reasoning Inconsistencies

This presentation describes the current and future plans for the Physics and Astronomy STEM Equity Achievement (SEA) Change project, a collaboration among AAAS and multiple Physics and Astronomy professional societies.

Physics and Astronomy SEA Change Pilot Progress

For the past several years, leadership from the Physics and Astronomy disciplinary societies have been working with AAAS to launch the SEA Change Project in our fields, specifically Physics and Astronomy departments. Beth Cunningham will provide an overview of the Physics/Astronomy disciplinary committee and outline its history, including how members of Physics and Astronomy have influenced the AAAS Disciplinary Awards.

Physics & Astronomy SEA Change Overview and History

SEA Change is an institutional transformation initiative of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The initiative aims to support diversity, equity and inclusion in STEMM. Through a collaboration with the physics and astronomy community efforts are underway to build a departmental level assessment for these fields to complement the institutional level awards structure managed by AAAS.

The Origins of SEA Change

The use of games in the classroom is an excellent pedagogical tool to improve student engagement, enjoyment and mastery of course material. The recent advent of low-cost, standalone virtual reality headsets in particular offers the opportunity for educators to create highly immersive and engaging learning experiences. The so-called MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) framework from game design theory, provides an excellent framework for developing these new forms of educational opportunities. This work will discuss the use of the open source Unity physics game engine along with the C# scripting language and low-cost commercial game assets to create a STEM themed virtual reality escape room for the tetherless Oculus Quest 1/2 VR headsets. In addition, recommended workflows and design methodologies will be presented.


Creating Virtual Reality STEM Escape Rooms

Humans think and communicate using auditory, gestural, and visual information to co-create and convey meaning. Notably, learning can be more effective with multimodal input and feedback such that complementary cognitive resources can be accessed. For technology-enhanced learning, this means that expanding learner input – what learners actively do – and feedback could bring about novel learning opportunities and advance inclusive learning. In this work, we design and investigate multimodal STEM interactive simulations that are inclusive to learners with and without sensory and/or learning disabilities. Through surveys with educators and interviews with K-12 and university students with and without visual impairments or learning disabilities using PhET Interactive simulations, we share our design process for learners utilizing an array of input and feedback modalities, exploring how learners might ground their mathematics and science learning through bodily movement, and expanding the possibility of input and feedback modalities PhET sims supporting learners to engage in collaborative learning tasks together.

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Swarmnotes for Live Collaborate Note-taking: Logistics and Uses

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