United States

Colorado School of Mines engineering physics majors take a two-semester sequence of Advanced Physics Labs during their junior year of studies that introduce them to laboratory measurement techniques in atomic physics, modern physics, nuclear physics, optics, and solid-state physics.&amp;nbsp; These courses introduce students to measurement and uncertainty, data reduction and error analysis, and effective scientific writing. &amp;nbsp;We require students to use the Python programming language to generate plots that can be imported into lab reports and presentations.&amp;nbsp; To provide an authentic learning experience, students complete a “Python Programming and Plotting Assignment” in the first-semester course before their first set of measurements.&amp;nbsp; In this presentation, we will share open source data students have plotted from COVID-19 Cases Reported at Mines, Lifetime Measurements of the Tau Lepton, Fitting the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Spectrum, and student-selected data sets.&amp;nbsp; Faculty, students, and teaching assistants from the courses will share their perspectives.

AAPT WM 21

Plotting Open Source Data in the Advanced Physics Lab Course

python programming language

plotting open source data

advanced physics lab

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.

Colorado School of Mines engineering physics majors take a two-semester sequence of Advanced Physics Labs during their junior year of studies that introduce them to laboratory measurement techniques in atomic physics, modern physics, nuclear physics, optics, and solid-state physics.&nbsp; These courses introduce students to measurement and uncertainty, data reduction and error analysis, and effective scientific writing. &nbsp;We require students to use the Python programming language to generate plots that can be imported into lab reports and presentations.&nbsp; To provide an authentic learning experience, students complete a “Python Programming and Plotting Assignment” in the first-semester course before their first set of measurements.&nbsp; In this presentation, we will share open source data students have plotted from COVID-19 Cases Reported at Mines, Lifetime Measurements of the Tau Lepton, Fitting the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Spectrum, and student-selected data sets.&nbsp; Faculty, students, and teaching assistants from the courses will share their perspectives.

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For Classical Mechanics at the sophomore level, I completely changed the way that homework was graded, using a self-grading/professor review process, 2 years in a row. Students would attempt all problems, then be given access to my complete solution for the assignment. They would grade themselves, most importantly including comments on self-reflection of their work, mistakes, understanding and correcting their errors with full commentary. Getting the correct answer was not the requisite for an excellent score. This was incredibly successful both from the student experiences (confidence and pressure relief), my experiences (insight into student understanding and process, gaps in skills/knowledge) &nbsp;and higher overall grades in the course. I will discuss methods used, examples of student self-gaded work, student feedback and the impact on other courses in the department and college.

Student Self-grading of Homework in Classical Mechanics

Standards-based grading uses a set of learning objectives rather than individual assignments or problems to determine grades. Standards based grading is common in the secondary education setting, but less so at the college level. We will discuss some of the significant advantages of the approach, especially for online classes, some of the particular challenges for implementing it in college classes, and describe two ways in which we have been able to meet those challenges. This is part of a series of talks stemming from the NextGen PET FOLC project. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation grant NSF DUE-1626496 &nbsp;

Standards Based Grading for College Physics Courses

We discuss student narratives, well-structured scientific explanations, as both formative and summative assessment tools. We will review the elements and organization of the narrative in the context of the NextGen PET curriculum; present some rubrics and metrics for evaluating narratives; suggest scaffolds and assignments to build students’ narrative writing (and reading) skills; and share our data and thoughts for the narrative as a particularly useful tool in the context of online classes. This is part of a series of talks stemming from the NextGen PET FOLC project. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation grant NSF DUE-1626496Sponsored by Lawrence Escalada

Scientific Explanations: Narrative structure, Prompts and Rubrics

The COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in a rapid switch to remote teaching for most university courses.&nbsp; One major concern of many introductory physics instructors has been the security of assessments (such as exams) in this remote environment.&nbsp; As an alternative to the high-stakes exams that are more traditional for introductory physics courses, we assigned group projects to students as an alternative assessment (along with individual low-stakes quizzes).&nbsp; We discuss advantages and disadvantages of putting group projects into practice, such as students’ engagement with the project and their affective response to working in groups on a high-stakes assignment.

Group Projects: An Alternate Assessment for Remote Teaching (and Beyond)

The Arizona State University Charter describes ASU as a “public research university, measured not by whom it excludes, but by&nbsp;whom it includes&nbsp;and how they&nbsp;succeed.” This motto is both inspirational and aspirational, but often policy decisions are made by those far-removed from the daily experiences of both instructors and students. The result is threatened elimination of programs supportive of this inclusive message in favor of those seemingly contrary to this call to action. This session will share lessons learned by ASU physics instructors as they advocated, both successfully and unsuccessfully, for policies they believed would positively impact the students they serve every day. Examples include the near elimination of the LA program during the COVID-19 crisis and working groups of concerned physics department stakeholders engaged with the APS IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Alliance) network.

Advocating for public university policies that authentically support students

Being an advocate for physics and STEM education does not need to mean leaving the classroom. In this session, the speaker will share how she advocated for the expansion of her district's physics program, and emphasized greater inclusion and access. Her adventure in advocacy continued as she&nbsp;became a state-level education advocate, from actions at the state capitol during the 2018 Arizona teacher walkout to working alongside lawmakers to pass a bill that provided $1.2 million in scholarships for STEM and CTE teachers.

Adventures in District and State-Level Advocacy

This presentation will highlight the outcomes of undergraduate students from Vassar College attending the AAPT virtual summer meeting. Seven undergraduate students attended this online conference hosted on underline.io as part of a for-credit course to be completed during the Fall 2020 semester. The impact of COVID-19 forced students and educators to adjust to virtual learning, making it necessary to share and implement new techniques to continue teaching and engaging students effectively. Fortunately, a shared online platform facilitated the international exchange of ideas from physics educators, graduate students, and undergraduates. Some of these ideas and methods were then shared within the course participants, and will be applied to enhance the Physics Department’s approach to various pedagogical issues with online teaching and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Examples of suggestions for physics faculty and students will be shown.

Results from Undergraduates Attending a Virtual Summer Meeting

The alarming human-resource shortage in all areas of quantum science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is projected to significantly slow the societal impact of the second quantum revolution. To address this need and accelerate the NSF Quantum Leap, a comparable leap in education strategy is required. QuSTEAM (Quantum Information Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) is a revolutionary undergraduate curriculum that will provide a national educational model for the emerging field of quantum information sciences (QIS). The development of QuSTEAM will rely on research-based educational best practices to provide a convergent and inclusive curriculum to a diverse community of future scientists and engineers, a curriculum that is modular and conducive to in-person, online, and hybrid delivery modalities. In this talk, we will present an outline of the work, which is still in very early stages. We will describe early emerging themes and models for innovative curriculum and programs integrated with industry.

QuSTEAM: A New Curriculum Development Project in Quantum Information Science

Undergraduate student leaders and faculty must partner to build thriving physics and astronomy programs. To achieve this aspirational goal and address systemic underrepresentation of African Americans and other groups within our departments, departments need to implement processes for self-evaluation and change. Department culture, SPS, and the role of advising are instrumental in effecting lasting change. This session will aim to examine areas where undergraduate student leaders and faculty can implement the recommendations of the AIP Task Force to Elevate the representation of African Americans in Undergraduate Physics (TEAM-UP) report. The session will focus on self-assessment tools and methods of evaluation for students,&nbsp;faculty, and undergraduate groups.

Driving Undergraduate Departmental Change: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Many physics teachers are seeking ways to make our courses more just and equitable, including creating units that address issues of social justice and utilize culturally relevant pedagogy. We often feel constrained by the innumerable topics that are supposed to fit into our courses, so how do we weave social justice into our courses and not make it an add-on that feels like one more thing we need to “cover”? Knowles Engineering, a project of the Knowles Teacher Initiative, is focused on helping teachers integrate engineering into their courses using content they already teach. Now, we have developed a framework to help teachers create curriculum that connects to local and global issues of social justice and uses the engineering design process to incorporate culturally relevant strategies. In this presentation, we will provide our draft framework, discuss the development of the framework, and how it can be employed by teachers.&nbsp;

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Plotting Open Source Data in the Advanced Physics Lab Course

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