United States

Any instructor working one-on-one with a large number of students has realized that most students have poor calculator skills. That deficit, along with the wide variety of calculators, makes it difficult to provide useful skills training without being able to exam exactly what calculations the student is performing. We’ve employed a methodology with two different groups of students using Microsoft Excel that enable concrete and specific feedback to students. The classes involved include a general education Physical World course and a more complex Physics for Aviation class. Both classes were offered online. In the general education course, students completed our standard pre/post assessment. In both classes, we also asked that the students complete a self-assessment of their learning gains. Those results along with details of our feedback methodology will be reported here.

AAPT SM 21

Is it time to abandon the calculator?

underprepared students

order of operations

constructive feedback

excel skills

math skills

CSEDU, the International Conference on Computer Supported Education, is a yearly meeting place for presenting and discussing new educational tools and environments, best practices and case studies on innovative technology-based learning strategies, and institutional policies on computer supported education including open and distance education. 

CSEDU 2020

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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Open and Individualized - Mechanics Homework Problems Project Using WeBWorK

Individualized homework problems delivered over the web are an effective way for students to learn first year mechanics. This is not news, but I learned how effective it was and that it is worth spending the time developing more problems as part of an open community. WeBWorK is an open-source on-line homework system that gives students instant feedback. It has better quiz options than most Learning Management Systems. WeBWorK has been used by the mathematics community for decades, but there are not many physics problems in the Open Problem Library (OPL) and less than 100 of the type needed for first and second-year physics and engineering students. I am a physics instructor at a two-year teaching college, but I ended up working with an engineering professor and coop students at UBC, a large research university We hope to have more people join us in this worthwhile project. 
I will present what I learned about WeBWorK, supervising coop students to create questions, and working with a professor from a large university to create open educational resources.

Open and Individualized - Mechanics Homework Problems Project Using WeBWorK

With the rise of the flipped (active) classroom, in addition to more courses moving online, the use of video as a form of instruction has increased substantially. This raises the question about the impact of this method of delivery on student learning. Under NSF funding, we have developed and evaluated multiple interactive video-enhanced tutorials (IVETs). The IVETs involve web-based activities that lead students through a problem solution using expert-like problem-solving approaches. As part of the IVET evaluation, we assigned one group of students to complete the IVETs as homework, while another group watched a video summary of the problem solving process. Both groups later completed a follow-up problem as a means of measuring impact on learning. Significant learning gains were observed for students in the IVET group compared to the Video-only group. Results from multiple IVETs will be shared along with suggestions for making videos more mentally engaging for students.
*Work supported by the NSF IUSE Program (DUE #1821396)


Video versus Interactive Video for Impact on Learning

When planning to take my calculus-based introduction to mechanics online, I had many small concerns, and two huge ones: tests and labs. In both cases, the solutions I found were imperfect, but contained elements that were improvements over the pre-pandemic versions. In this talk, I will focus on the labs. I replaced hands on labs with a mixture of simulations, computational exercises and labs using the sensors in students’ smartphones. While many students missed the “lab group experience” they were excited by the additional flexibility afforded by these labs, particularly those using their phones. I will discuss the benefits and shortcomings of all three of these lab formats but focus primarily on the phone-based labs, which I will be continuing to use post-pandemic.

Updating mechanics labs with technology for the pandemic and beyond

Nowadays computation stands alongside theory and experiment as one of the pillars of modern science, which is reflected in the fact that research and industry rely heavily on technology and computation. Therefore, we need to prepare graduates to integrate computation within their underlying discipline. In this study, we look at how academics across the College of Science at an Irish University use computational practices in their research. This will inform the design of a first-year undergraduate science course aimed at emphasizing the relevance of computational practices in science, by introducing them to authentic problems across the areas of science where computation is used and to make students competitive graduates in their respective fields.

A Collaborative Approach to Designing an Introductory Computational Science Course

Computational modeling and video analysis are two powerful tools in the physics classroom for helping students analyze and model real-world phenomena. When we pair the two of these together in one web-based platform, students can use video analysis to construct a computational model that reproduces the data they measure from the video and gain new physical insights and understandings. Pivot interactives is one platform that allows for the integration of video analysis side by side with computational tools like Tychos, Glowscript, and Pyret.


Computational Modeling & Video Analysis in One Easy Environment

Implementing Positive Psychology in International Physics Masterclass with LHC Data

Mission to the moon, rendezvous with the Intl. Space Station are some of the missions students must complete - they will learn orbital mechanics physics and apply what they have learned to launching a spacecraft and traveling to other planets and moons. Presentation also, covers model rocket physics (with and without air) design, simulation and launch using a simulator.

Fun before physics

One of the most promising sources of gravitational waves for the forthcoming LISA observatory are ``extreme mass ratio inspirals'' (EMRIs) : compact objects like a stellar mass black hole falling into a massive black hole, typically with mass ratios of 1 to 1 million. These sources will be important probes of the astrophysical dynamics in the nuclear star clusters of galaxies, as well as provide detailed spacetime maps of the black hole (analogous to satellite geodesy around the earth). EMRIs are expected to have high eccentricities, and when the periapsis dips very near the black hole exhibit an orbit phenomenon known as ``zoom-whirl'' behavior, where rapid near-circular "whirls" are followed by a "zoom" out to apoapsis. These cause a complicated waveform that are useful for mapping out the gravitational structure of the system. Zoom-whirl behavior can be intuitively understood in the context of effective potentials, which should be familiar to students from classical orbital theory in mechanics. Here we demonstrate and explain zoom-whirl orbits using effective potential theory around Schwarzschild black holes, and demonstrate a public tool for visualizing EMRIs from this viewpoint, suitable for use in a variety of classroom settings.

Understanding exotic gravitational wave orbits with effective potentials

Prior research indicates that secondary students perceive quantum physics as a complex version of Newtonian physic. This raises implications for instruction as quantum physics rests on a set of principles that differ drastically from Newtonian physics. The topic need not be complex, but it does require a conceptual framework for interpretation that is incompatible with Newtonian physics. Research shows that this topic can be introduced in a purely conceptually manner but requires careful guidance from the instructor and necessitates a conceptual shift in students from a Newtonian physics framework. As topics like wave-particle duality and quantum technology find more room in physics curriculum developing appropriate instructional approaches for this realm will become increasingly important. This paper focuses on the implications associated with introducing Quantum physics principles in the secondary classroom and the epistemological challenges that arise during instruction on this exciting, yet challenging subject.

Instructional Implications of Introducing Quantum Physics in the Secondary Classroom

One challenge (of many) I faced in moving my ~100-student in-person introductory physics course online was how to effectively integrate a group project into the curriculum. I needed a project that would serve as a collaborative stepping-stone to a broader view of physics, as well as a project that would be manageable to execute and grade in an online setting. Enter the team anthology, a team-based learning technique described by Elizabeth F. Barkley, Claire H. Major, and K. Patricia Cross in their book on collaborative learning techniques. I will share the constraints I faced with my particular class, as well as the adjustments to the idea I made in implementing it in the virtual Spring 2021 semester.

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Is it time to abandon the calculator?

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