United States

Generating graphical representations is an essential skill for productive student engagement in physics laboratory settings. However, there is a dearth of literature highlighting the strategies students use while working to generate graphs using their own experimental data. More recently, as students more frequently engage in open-ended physics lab courses, they experience additional freedom to decide what data to include in graphs and what types of graph(s) would allow for appropriate sensemaking towards answering experimental questions. This paper presents a case study analysis of a student group’s lab investigation to call attention to how students enact various productive strategies when working towards generating graphical representations in an introductory physics laboratory course. Results of this case study analysis identify three productive strategies students enact when working to generate graphs in lab settings, each of which is related to aspects of representational competency (RC) and are emblematic of experimental scientists’ own strategies: 1) identifying (potential) covarying quantities; 2) choosing representative data subsets suitable for representation; and 3) iteratively reducing data and generating graphs to assess graph’s viability in answering research questions. Our analysis also shows how students frequently refer back to their experimental goals when deciding what strategies to enact to generate graphs. This case study helps shed light on undergraduate students’ productive strategies when generating graphs in inquiry-based laboratory courses and provides preliminary evidence that students’ enacted productive strategies display similarities to those of professional experimental scientists.

PERC SM 21

Students productive strategies when generating graphical representations: An undergraduate laboratory case study

resources

laboratory

representations

**Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics**

As a gateway discipline to STEM majors and careers, physics plays a central role in deciding who does, and who doesn't, get to discover and pursue scientific careers. Technical and scientific professionals are rewarded with economic privilege and status which affords them both social and cultural power. Therefore, social justice will be realized only when the opportunity, and the choice, to excel in physics is open to all students. The culture and practices of the physics classroom reflect the culture of physics at large, which raises the question of how our professional physics communities can embrace, rather than inadvertently repel, a diverse group of academics that can help improve physics culture.  To this end, the 2021 Physics Education Research Conference will focus on defining inclusive spaces and practices. Additionally, we will explore strategies for eliminating exclusionary practices in our classrooms, research spaces, and professional organizations. We call on the community to propose sessions that will drive conversations related to these initiatives throughout PERC 2021.

Please download the full program [here. ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TRMC_SYJ3PUqXyP7sskA7LRSA8ow0eRE/view?usp=sharing)

August 4, 2021 - August 5, 2021 in a Virtual Conference Format

Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics

poster

Professional development is an effective way to diffuse evidence-based instructional practices. At the same time, assessing the impacts of professional development opportunities in physics education is still an emerging field. In this paper, we examine the efficacy of an assessment instrument designed to evaluate a university-wide professional development program at NDSU, the Theory of Planned Behavior Survey (TPBS). The development of the TPBS is based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, a theoretical framework originated in psychology, which uses participants attitudes, norms, and perceived behavioral control beliefs about a particular behavior (e.g., implementation of active learning) to predict intentions and explain that behavior. The TPB has been used in other fields to understand and predict behaviors, but it has not been utilized in STEM Ed research. Previous work has identified a link between changes in the constructs measured by the instrument that occurred after professional development at NDSU and the increase in the participants’ use of active learning techniques in the classroom. In this paper, we focus on examining evidence for the validity of the instrument and discuss methodologies for data collection, namely the retrospective pre-test approach, which avoids biases associated with self-reported data collected via traditional pre-post survey administrations. We use Arjoon, Xu, and Lewis’s framework for validity and provide evidence for the reliability, internal structure, and temporal stability of our instrument. We will also compare results from our instrument to those obtained using the Approaches to Teaching Inventory.

Examining the efficacy of a professional development assessment tool

As part of the development of the Fluids Conceptional Evaluation, we planned to conduct qualitative phenomenographic interviews in person with 140 students from 14 different types of institutions from around the country. The purpose of these interviews was to 1) Establish of the clarity of each proposed FCE item; 2) Establish the appropriateness of graphics if any used with each proposed item, and 3) Determine the different reasons students give for selecting particular responses to each item. When we received funding from the NSF for this project in Fall 2020, we were asked to address how we would adjust our methodology to conduct our research in the day of Covid 19. We quickly realized we had to switch our in-person interviews to Zoom virtual interviews. To date, we have conducted a number of virtual interviews with students from three institutions. In this poster, we will describe how we were able to make this adjustment and the unexpected benefits and drawbacks of conducting interviews virtually.

Not Quite Face to Face: Conducting Qualitative Phenomengraphic Interviews Virtually

Prior research has found room for improvement in both the accessibility of postsecondary STEM instruction as well as in the tools to support the necessary professional development to drive and measure shifts in instructional practice. As a starting point, we are developing a tool to support postsecondary STEM instructors in implementing Universal Design for Learning (UDL)-aligned strategies; we intend for the same tool to be useful for discipline-based education research about UDL in postsecondary STEM. Because prior research has revealed tensions in how the disability and postsecondary STEM education communities operationalize aspects of the UDL framework, we discussed the initial version of the UDL-IPOP with participants from these fields. We found that there were differences in language and interpretation across the disciplines that affected the way participants evaluated the protocol. There were also conflicting perspectives about how to apply the guidelines in each discipline.

Disciplinary tensions in applying Universal Design for Learning to postsecondary STEM

High school physics classrooms across the United States are making efforts to integrate computation into their approach to teaching physics. There is wide agreement on the importance of teaching computational thinking (CT) practices in these types of settings, but little research has focused on the dispositions that students can develop that support the development of CT practices. This presentation examines the case of one high school physics class where students do computation-integrated physics in a group work format. Drawing from a newly theorized framework on CT dispositions and the well-established theory of mindset, we investigate how students take up dispositions and mindset during class, and we examine connections between these theories and how they manifest in our data. We intend to help researchers and practitioners identify students’ dispositions so that they can provide opportunities for their students to better develop dispositions and more productively engage with computationally integrated physics.

Dispositions and mindset in computation-integrated physics

STEPP is a new scaffolded interactive resource that runs in a web browser designed to integrate computational thinking into support of the learning of introductory physics. With a flexible, problem-solving focus utilizing the computer science framework of Finite State Machines (i.e., state diagrams), STEPP is a novel approach to programming in a physics classroom that does not depend on knowledge of a programming language. Through an intuitive graphical interface built in the game-engine Unity, students are empowered to create their own models and simulations to dynamically visualize the problems they encounter in their study of 1D kinematics, 2D kinematics, and Newton’s laws of motion. Multiple mathematical representations of motion further support physics learning. The computational thinking skills taught through interaction with STEPP center around physics problem-solving (decomposition and algorithmic thinking), modeling, and abstraction. Although initially designed for on-level high school physics, STEPP is equally applicable for use in Advanced Placement and university introductory mechanics courses.

Design of a scaffolded interactive for integration of computational thinking into introductory physics

The Alma project was developed at San Francisco State with the purpose of promoting inclusion and affirming students’ identities by encouraging self-reflection through journaling. After the Alma Project was successfully piloted in 2018 in Supplemental Instruction (SI) classes, it further expanded into all SI classes as well as introductory physics and astronomy labs. In Spring 2020, reflective journaling was used as an asset-based tool to center student voices in physics classrooms and to recognize students’ experiences transitioning to online learning during the COVID-19 global pandemic. In addition, a question was added to lab experience surveys to understand students' experiences with remote learning during COVID-19. Essays (N = 257) and surveys (N = 1031) were analyzed using an iterative thematic coding approach. Based on these surveys and essays, we identify themes of positive and negative impact of online teaching and learning as well as strategies students described for self-care.

Reflective Journaling in the Era of COVID

Through reflective journaling, the Alma project at San Francisco State University (an HSI) seeks to affirm STEM students’ identities, support connections with their life experiences, and recognize their cultural wealth. Our department offers a number of introductory physics and astronomy lecture and lab sequences including: a three-semester calculus-based physics sequence targeted toward engineering, computer science and physical science majors; a two-semester algebra-based physics sequence targeted toward students in the biosciences; a one-semester conceptual physics course; and one-semester conceptual astronomy course. In response to the prompt “why am I here,” designed to draw out their values and purpose, students journaled for 5 - 10 minutes and then spent time in class sharing their responses. Using an iterative thematic coding approach, we analyzed more than 400 essays and identified 11 cultural capitals expressed by students. Here we compare and contrast the frequencies of cultural capitals exhibited by respondents in different course types.

Cultural Capitals Expressed through Reflective Journaling in Introductory Physics & Astronomy Labs

We report on the impact of incorporating computational activities into a one semester general astronomy course. Computation has been shown to be an effective active learning tool in physics for developing understanding of concepts, connecting concepts with formulae, and associating science with prediction. Fifteen spreadsheet-based computational exercises were designed and field tested to complement the existing active learning astronomy curriculum. Examples of these computational exercises are presented along with assessment of the success of these computational activities. The reasons for introducing computational activities will be discussed, along with benefits supporting the inclusion, and difficulties faced when implementing the change. Student learning pre to post was measured with the TOAST and LPCI. Additionally, student survey data was collected to investigate student attitudes toward computational exercises and overall perceptions of the course. Assessment revealed TOAST correctness gains of 20\%, LPCI correctness gains of 29\%, and overall positive attitudes towards the computational activities.

Incorporating computational activities in a general education astronomy course

Nowadays computation is considered to be one of the pillars of modern science. This is reflected in the fact that much scientific research and industry work relies heavily on technology and computation. As university educators we need to equip graduates with the tools to help them succeed in their discipline. The study reported here is part of a larger project which aims to identify computational practices used by faculty from across the College of Science in an R1 Irish university in their disciplines and research, in order to inform the design of a computational science course intended for first-year undergraduate students. This paper reports on findings from one-to-one interviews with fourteen faculty from across six schools in the college. Their understanding of the nature of computational thinking and their views on the role that computation does/can play in the undergraduate science curriculum, and specifically in teaching and learning within their disciplinary program are presented. Concerns and challenges related to the embedding of computation in undergraduate science programs voiced by participants are presented here. Finally, implications of the findings for the design of the first year computational science course are discussed

Computational practices in introductory science courses

National calls to transform laboratory courses by making them more discovery based can be met by engaging students in multi-week final projects. One plausible outcome of this approach is that students may feel ownership of their projects. We define ownership as a dynamic relationship between students and their projects characterized by three student-project interactions that evolve over three project phases. Student-project interactions include students' contributions to, emotional responses to, and new understanding of the project. Phases include choosing the topic and team, carrying out the research, and creating and presenting end-of-project deliverables. Drawing on interviews with students collected as part of a multi-year, multi-institutional study, this paper will elaborate on the evolution of students' own new knowledge about the project across different project phases. Throughout our work, we compare the type of ownership that manifests when students work on projects in a lab course to the type of ownership gardeners feel when tending to plots in a community garden. We end with recommendations for instructors wishing to foster project ownership in their lab courses.

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Students productive strategies when generating graphical representations: An undergraduate laboratory case study

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