United States

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) are essential in the teaching of introductory physics at many universities, and have been so for over a century. However, no formal efforts to prepare GTAs for their teaching responsibilities existed before roughly 1970, and only the last three decades have seen systematic research on the best methods of GTA training. In this talk, I provide a brief summary of the most salient results from research in GTA preparation, and synthesize the most important recommendations from the literature into the six (plus one) principles for best practices in GTA development.

AAPT SM 20

Research Results and Best Practices for GTA Preparation

ta training

gta preparation

graduate teaching assistants

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

In an effort to begin the task of suffusing computational approaches throughout or physics and astronomy curriculum, we recently decided to adapt a required, sophomore-level, intermediate mechanics course to include an introduction to scientific programming and numerical methods. Given that this course is typically used to develop the mathematical tools students require in their third and fourth years, such as solving differential equations, working with advanced vector manipulations, and processing matrices, it seems that adding programming approaches fits perfectly with the course goals. Of course, there are drawbacks as well, since adding material requires removing other material that has long been part of the course. In this talk, I will present my experience, both the positive and negative aspects, and I will argue that the overall result has been beneficial. I will also discuss my very recent conversion of the course from using Java to using Python with Jupyter notebooks.

Integrating Computation into an Intermediate Mechanics Course

In this talk, we present results from our analysis of the long-term impacts of participating in the New Faculty Workshop-Faculty Online Learning Community (NFW-FOLC). The NFW-FOLC supports new physics and astronomy faculty as they implement research-based instructional strategies (RBISs) in their classrooms. A NFW-FOLC cohort meets regularly via videoconference over the course of one year. We have interviewed participants two years after the completion of their FOLC cohort to investigate the longitudinal impacts of FOLC participation on their current teaching practices. The main goals for NFW-FOLC participants are for them to develop as reflective practitioners and for them to successfully implement RBISs over the long term. We also hypothesize that participants may become change agents at their local institutions. We will speak to all three of these impacts in this presentation, discussing the potential of a FOLC experience to influence participants’ teaching well after the FOLC stops meeting regularly.

Long-term impact of faculty online learning community (FOLC) participation

After having implemented two lessons developed as part of the STEP UP project, five teachers were interviewed about their experiences using the materials in their classes. These teachers have unique backgrounds and teach in schools with different social and economic contexts. We triangulated the quantitative outcomes of their students with their interview reflections to determine how local context is associated with student outcomes, particularly students’ perceptions of the lessons and the post-high school physics intentions.

How Teacher Attitudes Toward Physics Impact Student Outcomes

Technocracy, a problematic world view that values technical abilities and solutions over social ones, pervades engineering. In our pedagogy seminar for Learning Assistants (LA) in an engineering design course, we engaged LAs in role-plays, semi-improvised performances guided by a prompt, around troubles faced by a student team. We draw on audio-video records of a role-play and following discussion from our pedagogy seminar in which LAs, playing as students or an LA, had to contend with both social and technical issues. Using tools from discourse analysis, we analyze how technocracy is both reproduced and challenged during the role-play and following class discussion. The discussion allowed the LAs to reflect on their assumptions and decisions during the role-play. We will present implications for the design and facilitation of role-plays as well as for research studying STEM cultures. *Work supported by NSF Grant 1733649.

How technocracy becomes visible in engineering learning assistants’ role-plays

Our group has created open source online learning modules covering around 95% of common topics in a college level calculus-based mechanics course. These learning modules are hosted on an open-source platform, Obojobo, which can be deployed on a cloud server and integrated with any learning management system supporting LTI standards. The motivation to create this new set of open education resources (OER) is threefold: 1. They blend instruction, practice and assessment together in a mastery-based modular design to improve student learning; 2. The modular design provides higher flexibility and better organizational structure to facilitate, adopt, and reuse OER; 3. Our group is developing methods to analyze student learning data that enable the modules to be continuously improved based on data analysis. In the future, these modules could hopefully replace lectures and textbooks to promote the adoption of active learning practices in the classroom.

An Online Physics Course to Empower the Adoption of Open Education Resources

It is common among many college students to wait until the last minute to complete homework assignments, which leads to insufficient time for study. Can assigning extra credit for early completion of homework assignments alter students’ behavior? We study students’ work habits when completing mastery-based online learning modules for homework by analyzing clickstream data collected from the online learning platform over multiple semesters. In some semesters, students may earn extra credit by completing some of the assigned modules well before the due date in the form of “treasure trove” quizzes. These quizzes receive overwhelmingly positive feedback from students. We examine in what ways the "treasure troves" change student behavior by clustering learning events into sessions using a machine learning algorithm. We examine how duration, number, or event density of clusters differs when “treasure troves” are introduced. We also study their impact on exam scores.

Can extra credit effectively reduce cramming behavior for online homework?

Learning assistant (LA) programs support instructors transforming their courses to use evidence-based instructional strategies. We investigated the types of schools that have LA programs to better understand how the distribution of those programs supports excellent and inclusive education across institutions. We used the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (CCIHE) public database to compare schools with and without LA programs, looking at a variety of institutional characteristics to determine whether the distribution of LA programs is equitable across different types of institutions. We will discuss the implications of our findings and identify areas for future research using critical quantitative perspectives in physics education research.

Characteristics of institutions with Learning Assistant programs: An equity investigation

We present student learning gains in each of a two-part introductory algebra-based physics sequence for a multidisciplinary student population taught with and without the use of undergraduate learning assistants (LAs). We report on our pilot program design, inspired by the Learning Assistant Alliance model and adjusted to suit the particular considerations of this physics sequence, including student population, class size, and existing course structure. We specifically discuss the results of assigning our LAs to submit written feedback to their groups, as well as issues arising from whether or not the group work is for a grade. Additionally, we discuss the development of our LAs throughout this program, closing with lessons learned and plans for Fall 2020. As we are extremely pleased with the results of this program, we plan to continue it and are glad to offer our experience to the physics teaching community.

Using Learning Assistants in a Multidisciplinary Algebra-Based Physics Classroom

We present preliminary work on a method of assessing students' level of understanding experimental uncertainty in undergraduate physics laboratory courses. We devised a set of assessment problems in a nested structure, where we isolated each component of what a "major" question asks into a set of stand-alone "minor" questions. By isolating each key step or knowledge as separate minor questions, we find that our method helps identify the specific pitfalls in the training a student has received in lab, providing useful information for revising future lab instructions and curriculum.

ELUSA: Elementary Laboratory Uncertainty Skills Assessment

Computationally integrated physics classes lack assessment of the approaches to computation. The recent call for integration of computation within physics curricula should be supplemented with the appropriate assessment. We present analyses of an initial set of interviews geared toward determining the learning goals in computationally integrated introductory physics classes. These interviews are the first part of a larger study aimed at creating an assessment for computationally integrated physics classes. Interviewees were chosen based on our perception of their involvement in computation, introductory mechanics, and physics education research. Interviewees were either categorized in academia or industry and the interview protocol was adapted to both populations. Semi structured interviews were performed through recorded video calls which were transcribed. We used grounded theory to analyze the interviews. The analysis of these interviews is ongoing. Data collected from these interviews will be used to design a survey for further consensus of the learning goals.

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Research Results and Best Practices for GTA Preparation

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