United States

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.

AAPT SM 20

Using Learning Assistants in a Multidisciplinary Algebra-Based Physics Classroom

algebra-based physics

learning assistants

undergraduate physics

Join us in exploring emergent themes in PER as a scholarly endeavor and as a research community!  Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?
Following the lead of AAPT for the summer meeting, PERC 20/20 was virtual. Enjoy browsing the content.

PERC SM 20

technical paper

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.


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.

Analyzing Interviews About Learning Goals in Computational Integrated Introductory Physics

Projects and Practices in Physics (P-Cubed) is a flipped, problem-based learning course for introductory, calculus-based mechanics. P-Cubed was designed using the communities of practice framework, with a principle learning goal to develop scientific practices. To promote students’ development of practices, students spend their in-class time working in groups of 4 to 5 members to solve complex physics problems. Practice development is then facilitated through formative feedback and assessments aligned with growth in practice. Each student receives weekly, individualized feedback from their instructor (either a faculty member, teaching assistant or learning assistant) as a practice-based assessment. The feedback focuses on helping students improve their individual understanding and group collaboration through the development of key group-based practices such as decision making and planning. This presentation reports on a series of semi-structured interviews that were conducted with students at various points in the semester to understand the impact feedback had on them.

Student perspective about the impacts of feedback in P-Cubed

I’ve spent nearly 30 years navigating the physics and, more recently, astronomy communities advocating within the professional society space for women, people of color, LGBT+ people, and others from marginalized groups so that they might thrive in their educational spaces and careers. At the same time, I’ve had to navigate these communities from the identity of a Black Woman without a physics degree, which has contributed to the experiences I’ve had throughout my career and has shaped my approach to this work. In this talk, I’ll share some of my views, motivations, and experiences doing DEI work in the professional society space; discuss some of the work I’ve done including my most recent work leading the AIP Task Force to Elevate the representation of African Americans in Undergraduate Physics (TEAM-UP) project; and reflect on the ways in which each of us can uplift students and scientists from marginalized communities to create a better environment for them and all of us.

“Doing Physics” and being a Champion for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Professional Society Arena

One of the ubiquitous problems in classical mechanics is that of a simple pendulum attached to a support that oscillates in time. Under certain conditions, such a pendulum can be modeled as a driven harmonic oscillator, and, as a result, the pendulum can undergo large-amplitude oscillations when the driving frequency of the oscillating support matches the natural frequency of the pendulum. To accompany analysis of this problem in mechanics courses, a simple apparatus has been built to model the system described above. The apparatus will be presented, along with a Lagrangian mechanics analysis of the motion. In addition, several other applications of the demonstration will be discussed.

Demonstration to Show Resonant Oscillations of a Simple Pendulum

Disc golf is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Played much like traditional golf, players attempt to throw a plastic disc to a target basket in the fewest number of throws possible. Like traditional golf, disc golf involves many interesting concepts from physics and kinesiology. Yet little is known within the disc golf community about the physical phenomena that governs the sport. In an attempt to explore and explain the physics behind the disc golf shot, an independent research project was conducted by an undergraduate student and a physics professor. This research describes the differences in flight patterns between the major types of disc golf discs and a video analysis describing throwing mechanics and the resulting effects on flight characteristics. This presentation will involve the description of the student research project and a description of how these concepts can be integrated into introductory physics courses.

Disc Golf Physics

The Living Physics Portal* (www.livingphysicsportal.org) is a website dedicated to cultivating a community in which physics faculty teaching interdisciplinary physics courses can discuss problems of practice and share curricular content. Our research team is interested in understanding faculty’s use of the Portal. As part of this effort, we have been exploring what forms of participation can be tracked and meaningfully interpreted from users’ actions. We have developed a model that categorizes particular actions on the Portal. The model of participation includes the following categories: Networking, Interpreting, Dialoguing, Collecting, Connecting, Creating, Remixing and Viewing. In this talk, we will showcase our model of online participation and apply this model to a single user’s online activity. *This work is supported by NSF #1624478 and #1624185.

Living Physics Portal: Designing analytics to map faculty’s evolving participation

I overview three aspects of physics lab instruction where there is a tremendous opportunity for education researchers and innovative practitioners to impact student learning. The first area is shifting the theory-centric culture of physics education to a balanced emphasis on experiment and theory, which reflects professional practice within physics. I will show why the laboratory should be recognized as a critical environment for learning complex problem-solving and as highly relevant for students' career preparation. The second area is embedding scientific practices within labs. Within the growing literature there is variation in viewing practices as discrete and transferrable skills versus integrated and highly contextualized, which has implications for researchers and educators. Third, I see potential for more project-based courses to blur the boundaries between lab instruction and research experiences by integrating a range of practices and reframing the purpose of a lab, which can affect students' autonomy and identity within the lab.

Challenges and opportunities for innovation and research in physics lab education

It is important for physics students to develop ethics knowledge, yet this is rarely taught in physics classes. We are addressing this limitation in our physics classes at Texas State University. Here, we focus on teaching about the ethics of building the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii for an observational astrophysics class. We developed resources for students to make informed decisions about this complex issue. The unit encompasses an introduction of the TMT, a local perspective in San Marcos, a history of Hawaii, and perspectives about the TMT relative to formal ethical frameworks. In this talk, we will present data from this new unit in Spring 2020 including students’ video-recorded classroom conversations and their written work. We will highlight what worked well in our design and what could be improved in order to support the community of physics educators and education researchers in teaching about ethics in physics classes.

Lessons from teaching ethics using the Thirty Meter Telescope controversy

We developed five 30-minute topical quizzes in an introductory electromagnetism course (n~150) at MIT, and administered them electronically in class. For each problem on the quiz, students were given a randomized variant from a subset of three variants. We analyzed both the self-consistency of these quizzes and their correlation with other components of the course, including the final exam. We also looked at correlations between “types” of problems on both quizzes and the final. Finally, we sought to determine what problem variants, if any, were statistically significantly different from their counterparts within a problem. Quizzes, as a category, correlated more strongly with the final exam than any other component of the course, including the midterm exam. We argue that frequent quizzes are an effective and superior assessment compared to other assessments in the course. We intend to make these materials available to instructors at other institutions.

Using Learning Assistants in a Multidisciplinary Algebra-Based Physics Classroom

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