United States

In 2015, seven institutions joined forces to apply a common model of change, creating the Transforming Education, Stimulating Teaching and Learning Excellence (TRESTLE; http://trestlenetwork.org) network. In this talk I will discuss how we are using “principles” to evaluate the network and its impacts (see M.Q. Patton, 2017). Principles are statements which identify the core values, philosophy, or operating assumptions of an initiative, allowing a project to externalize its core values and create accountability for enacting those values. For example, one core principle of TRESTLE is “focus on the department as the main unit of change.” Identifying the core principles of TRESTLE allows us to ask questions such as “Has the network adhered to its principles?”, “How were the principles adapted?”, “Are these principles effective?”, and “How do these principles appear differently at different levels of the system?”

AAPT SM 20

“Guiding star” principles to organize change efforts: The TRESTLE Network

educational change

department change

physics education research

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. The program featured plenary speakers, sessions, workshops and many special activities.

For more information please visit the 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting page at: https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/SM2020/index.cfm.


The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. 

technical paper

While we might assume that courses are intelligently designed to reflect core concepts and how people learn, all too often course materials reflect disengaged and encyclopedic surveys. Beginning with a fortuitous discussion on the energetics of chemical bonding, Melanie Cooper (Michigan State University) and I have worked to reframe the disciplinary purpose, driving narrative, and conceptual focus of introductory courses in general (CLUE) and organic (OCLUE) chemistry and biology (biofundamentals™). These efforts align with the NAS Framework for Science Education and are based on OER books supporting interactive courses that employ the beSocratic™ web-based system free-form formative assessment system. The result is an emphasis on helping students identify and apply the underlying processes that govern the behavior of the systems under study, enabling them develop well reasoned and plausible models for complex phenomena. Studies on learning outcomes reveal significant improvements in understanding of core ideas.

Building effective and engaging courses supported by evidence and theory

Researchers and educators have developed numerous tools to help students simulate and visualize aspects of quantum mechanics taught in the classroom. However, these tools are typically limited in their scope in that they focus on a narrow range of phenomena. In order to provide a more versatile tool, the ScienceAtHome group at Aarhus University has developed the Quantum Composer, a flow-based program capable of simulating 1D quantum evolution, including potentials that are not typically analytically tractable. Composer also has a suite of other tools that allow students to explore real research problems, including the simulation of Bose-Einstein condensation and control of quantum dynamics via a built-in optimizer. This presentation will introduce Quantum Composer and describe its applications in the classroom from the advanced high school level through to graduate physics education.

Quantum Composer: A flow-based tool for visualization and simulation of quantum mechanics

In traditional labs, instructors provide explicit directions for students to complete experiments and achieve predetermined results that coincide with concepts learned in lecture. However, in inquiry-based labs where students generate their own research questions and procedures, the results of an experiment are often unknown or unexpected. Students in this setting typically find outcomes that do not align with their intuitive predictions or models presented to them in lecture. This perplexing moment in the lab may lead them to take various actions, from collecting more data or asking an instructor, to trying to sweep it under the rug. We call this recognition of a gap in understanding and the subsequent activities that tend to the issue problematizing. I will discuss a study in which we analyzed video of students performing a free fall experiment to determine how they problematize after finding an object’s acceleration to be quite different from g = 9.81 m/s^2.

Problematizing in inquiry-based labs: How students respond to unexpected results

This talk will describe the innovations that we made in our introductory physics courses at Rutgers, Newark (algebra-based and calculus-based) using the ISLE approach. In the spring of 2019 we ran two pilot sections of ISLE-based labs and in the fall of 2019 we implemented whole course reforms in two of our introductory courses with over 400 students. The reforms included revisions in student activities in all three parts of the courses - lectures (large room meetings), recitations (small room meetings) and laboratories. We provided professional development for the 12 instructors and 20 Learning Assistants teaching these courses in a pre-semester workshop and weekly preparation meetings. We will share the details of the changes that we made and the data that we collected using the E-CLASS survey and student evaluations. Rutgers, Newark is an urban public university. Our experience will be useful for those teaching in similar institutions.

ISLE-based reforms in an urban public university

In this talk we present data collected in two introductory physics courses (algebra-based and calculus-based) using the ISLE approach at Rutgers, Newark. The data come from students’ solutions of traditional physics problems evaluated using a rubric that assesses student reasoning abilities, such as ability to communicate, to use different representations consistently, and to evaluate their answer. We track students through one semester and analyze their progress using weekly assessments and course exams.

Studying student reasoning in an ISLE-based classroom

Teaching in an active, student-centered environment is very different from teaching in a traditional environment, requiring a different set of dispositions, knowledge and skills. This environment can be particularly challenging for new instructors with no classroom experience. During the 2019-2020 academic year, we reformed the introductory physics courses at Rutgers, Newark using the ISLE approach. The laboratory portion of this reform included eight instructors, including one ISLE expert and four graduate teaching assistants with no previous teaching experience. In this talk we will discuss the professional development conducted and the changes we observed in lab instruction that occurred during the fall semester. Specifically, we will present the observation protocols we used, our measurements of instructor improvement, and the relationship between the instructor scores and student learning and attitudes about experimental physics.

Facilitating Instructor Change in an ISLE-Based Course

The STEMcoding project (http://youtube.com/c/STEMcoding) has developed a number of high school level “Physics of Video Games” coding activities that are fusion of PhET-like web interactives and traditional coding activities. A crucial question is whether these activities have an impact on student conceptual physics knowledge. The curriculum was tested in an intensive two-week course at a STEM high school in Columbus, Ohio in January 2020. I briefly overview assessment results from that effort, including what we learned, how the assessments will be improved, and how teachers can participate in the research side of the STEMcoding project. I will also give an update on efforts to develop coding activities that allow students to simulate objects in direct motion videos, and other improvements to our suite of activities.

Testing the STEMcoding Curriculum in an Intense Two Week Course

It is known that flow theory [1] can be a powerful tool investigating people's mental states during different activities. Previous research has shown that using the flow theory as a framework we can create a Likert scale survey measuring students’ mental state during the laboratories [2]. We used this survey to investigate students’ attitudes towards ISLE-based labs. Students answered the survey after regular ISLE-based labs, where they used real equipment, and after vISLE labs, where students worked with video recorded experiments. We analyzed students’ answers to the flow survey to observe how these different lab settings affect students’ mental states. [1] M. Csikszentmihalyi, "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience", (Harper and Row, New York, NY, 1990). [2] A. Karelina, “Flow Theory: Students’ Mental State During Physics Labs”, AAPT Summer Meeting, Provo UT, 2019.

Students’ attitudes during ISLE-based apparatus labs and video labs

Prior research has shown that students can develop scientific reasoning abilities by engaging in authentic scientific investigations in a course following the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach. In our current project, we set out to answer two questions: a. Can students develop scientific reasoning abilities through video-based experiments in place of experiments with physical apparatus? b. What are the affordances and constraints of each environment (video experiments versus real experiments)? To answer those, we created and implemented five video-based ISLE learning cycles (v-ISLEs) and used a quasi-experimental design in a class of 96 students. We randomly assigned 2 lab sections to the vISLE condition and another two lab sections to an apparatus condition. Both engaged in the identical experiment sequence. We will present how students developed and displayed scientific reasoning abilities in their lab reports and in exam questions that were created to specifically examine scientific reasoning.

Developing scientific abilities while learning physics through the ISLE approach

We developed a guided-inquiry tutorial to foster connections between mathematics and physics in the context of undergraduate thermodynamics, specifically the heat equation. Based on literature and empirical reasons, we formulated design principles that guided the development, including promoting graphical reasoning, stimulating thinking about physical meaning first, and paying explicit attention to the mathematical and physical aspects of concepts and ideas, and as such promote interdisciplinary connections. We determined the effectiveness of the design principles by testing the tutorial in teaching-learning interviews with three groups of three students each. In this session, we present the design principles and how they impacted the students’ reasoning process. We aim to inform practitioners in the field who teach this subject, but furthermore anyone who wants to strengthen the connections between mathematics and physics in the topic they are teaching.

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“Guiding star” principles to organize change efforts: The TRESTLE Network

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