United States

I will provide quantitative data on the improvement in student success rates caused by the use of a Student Success Coach at a large two-year college. The College of DuPage (COD) received a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program to provide support to approximately twenty STEM students per year. Selected students received full tuition scholarships, access to summer internships, guided study groups and STEM activities on campus. In addition, a key element of the support is the assignment of a Student Success Coach who provided close, personal attention to these particular students. In what is sometimes referred to as “intrusive advising”, the Success Coach worked to intervene early before small issues become larger ones. COD has completed this first grant and is applying for a second grant to expand the program to part-time students. (NSF DUE Award #1564720)

AAPT SM 22

Using Intrusive Advising to Improve Student Success

UI is excited to announce the rescheduled 12th Annual Conference on Understanding Interventions December 10 & 12, 2020! As you may recall, the original conference scheduled back in March 2020 had to be cancelled due the worsening global conditions, and further declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stay tuned for details regarding the virtual conference.

On December 10, 2020 from 12:00-5:00pm (EST), and December 12, 2020 from 11:00am-5:00pm (EST), UI will host the Virtual 12th Annual Understanding Interventions Conference powered by Underline. Attendees will experience plenaries, workshops, symposia, and poster presentations on hypothesis-based research on interventions and initiatives that broaden participation in STEM careers. The conference will continue to facilitate the dialogue among education, behavioral, and social science researchers, evaluators, and faculty in STEM fields who participate in intervention programs. Graduate students in these fields are strongly encouraged to attend. Workshops, sessions, and posters will communicate effective strategies from successful STEM intervention programs, present results from empirical research studies, and synthesize the translation of research findings into practice on STEM learning, undergraduate research, graduate education, and student retention.

12th Conference on Understanding Interventions 2020

12th Annual Understanding Interventions Conference continues to facilitate the dialogue among education, behavioral, and social science researchers, evaluators, and faculty in STEM fields who participate in intervention programs. Workshops, sessions, and posters communicate effective strategies from successful STEM intervention programs, present results from empirical research studies, and synthesize the translation of research findings into practice on STEM learning, undergraduate research, graduate education, and student retention.

technical paper

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. This meeting is an excellent opportunity to share your expertise and learn from and network with leaders in the field.



A diverse physics workforce benefits society and the economy; yet, physics graduates do not re?ect an inclusive community. Over 18% of the American population identifies as non-white Hispanic, though American Institute of Physics data show that only 9% of physics bachelor degrees were awarded to Hispanic students as of 2018. Community colleges are more representative of community demographics with 27% of students identifying as Hispanic and over 200 colleges federally recognized as Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), but community colleges do not serve as many physics majors compared to baccalaureate-granting institutions. The TRAINS project supports physics URM transfer students in navigating cultural interfaces and the transition from a community college to a baccalaureate-granting institution. This study focuses specifically on Hispanic community college students’ early expectations for building relationships with mentors and peers. Understanding these expectations will help faculty support URM students through their undergraduate research experiences and transitions to baccalaureate-granting physics programs.

Understanding Hispanic Physics Majors’ Expectations of Relationship-Building at Community College

At the 2020 AAPT Winter Meeting, research on the effect of Community Building on underrepresented groups in an Introductory Physics course at San Diego Mesa College was presented. Data was presented showing an increase in success as these techniques were implemented. Then the pandemic hit. This presentation shows how these techniques were implemented in a remote setting and the effect on student success. It also reports on student success in different demographics in the aftermath of the pandemic and asks the question "How are our students doing?"

Community Building in Physics Classroom: A Pandemic Update

In 2018, I presented a poster on the number of women in leadership roles in physics education. In this poster I will update the data and include some new data. From 2018: I will share data about the numbers of women in various leadership positions in physics education: editors, research group directors, professional organization roles. This data is more difficult to gather because of the short-term nature of people's time in these roles. But a snapshot in time of this data provides important information for the discussion of under-representation in physics.

An Update on Women’s Leadership in Physics Education

Only about 20% of individuals earning bachelor’s degrees in physics are women, and roughly 13% are underrepresented racial minorities (URMs). These numbers have remained relatively steady for more than a decade, thus there is a need to investigate ways to improve their representation in physics. Out-of-class science and engineering activities have been shown to influence students’ career interests in physics. This study evaluates how a physics summer camp for high school girls influences the critical physics identities and career interests of the camp participants. We use a mixed-methods approach that includes conducting surveys and interviews. The survey results show overall positive shifts in critical physics identity. The interviews provide insight into which aspects of the physics camp contribute to these shifts as well as how the camp influences URMs.

Impact of a Physics Camp on Girls’ Critical Physics Identities

“Should a Nobel prize have been awarded to Annie Jump Cannon, Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin, Henrietta Leavitt, Vera Rubin, Margaret Geller, or Jocelyn Bell Burnell? Locate, read, and cite at least three separate sources to justify your response.” This assignment can be used at the beginning of a term to spark interest before students get deadened by their academic load, or can come at the end of the term as a capstone project. Providing a list makes the assignment appear more straightforward. However, since the top hits on the Internet pull up mostly female astronomers, to ask students to argue on behalf of any astronomer overlooked by the Nobel committee produces similar results while preventing any complaints that a social agenda is being pushed.

Deserving of Nobel? The Harvard Computers and other Neglected Pioneers

This presentation highlights the technical engineering systems used to safely and successfully capture real-time video and data from a high-altitude weather balloon during the October 14, 2023 annular eclipse and the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. The engineering POD leads and their students have been carefully designing, documenting and testing the systems that will be distributed to the participating forty engineering teams. System components include an Iridium tracking system, a cutdown system, a tracking ground station, a streaming video system, a dual camera system providing 360 degree views, a helium vent valve system for latex balloons, zero pressure balloons, temperature sensors, pressure sensors and precision GPS sensors. Software to support the system components include a real time tracking website, tracking ground station code, dual camera and streaming code, along with the embedded code. Participating teams will learn the systems and have an opportunity to create their own payload.

Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project Engineering Systems Overview

Galactic cosmic rays are high-energy particles that impinge on Earth’s atmosphere, in the form of positively charged particles, protons. The protons interact with atmospheric nuclei to produce a cascade of secondary particles known as a galactic cosmic ray shower. This post-collision secondary shower depends on altitude, latitude, solar activity, and air pressure. The Regener-Pfotzer (R-P) maximum, which is stated to be between 15-25 km, is the altitude where the maximum number of charged particle detections is measured with a Geiger-Müller detector. In order to better understand the dynamics of the collisions, a flight stack containing two payloads was flown. One payload contained four pancake shaped Geiger counters measuring vertical and horizontal charged particle coincidences. The other payload measured the omnidirectional charge particle interactions. Data show that a R-P maximum occurs at different altitudes depending on direction of the coincidences consistent with previous research in this area.

High Altitude Balloon Directional Measurements of Cosmic Ray Shower Events

We investigated how the answer format for online practice affects the learning and assessment of vector addition skills in introductory university physics. Both algebra-based and calculus-based students practiced vector addition throughout their introductory mechanics course using an online testing and mastery practice platform at a large public university. Class sections were split into two training conditions where students either answer in multiple-choice format or free-response format by drawing the answer vector on a grid. We compared pre- and post-tests between the two conditions to determine whether the vector addition format affected performance and training. On the pretest, there were within-student differences in answering and a hierarchy between question types, where almost all the students who can answer the free-response questions correctly can also answer the multiple-choice questions correctly but not vice versa. We will also present the results from the post-test and any implications for instruction.

Learning Vectors Online: Comparing Multiple-Choice to Drawing Vectors

Research suggests that certain incorrect patterns of student reasoning remain even after instruction. Many challenging tasks seem to elicit strong intuitively appealing (but incorrect) responses. Even those students who demonstrate that they possess the formal knowledge necessary to analyze given situations correctly tend not to use this knowledge. Dual-process theories of reasoning suggest that to catch a mistake, (1) a reasoning red flag must be raised, and (2) the validity of a response must be checked. The last step is particularly challenging for many introductory physics students. In this talk, we will discuss the results of a study intended to help students develop validity checking strategies in various situations that require the application of Newton's second law. We will discuss implications for instruction and research.

Teaching Reasoning Skills Necessary to Validate or Reject a Response

We report on a study of response time data on basic algebra questions in undergraduate introductory Physics courses to learn more about its relationship with accuracy. Of specific interest is the importance of familiarity with Physics symbols in algebraic expressions. For isomorphic questions, we investigate the differences in response time and accuracy distributions between two groups of students - one trained with common Math symbols and the other with Physics symbols. We also investigate and compare changes in the response time-accuracy relation for the two symbol formats. To improve the analysis, a response time effort index is created based on the distributions to estimate the number of students making rapid guesses. Important goals of this analysis include gaining insights into how to construct valid and reliable measures of algebra skills relevant for introductory physics, and the extent to which students can improve these skills on time scales of weeks.

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