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We present our experience of conducting first semester calculus-based introductory physics laboratories remotely in the Spring 2020 semester. Six laboratories were redesigned to give students maximally hands-on experience under the restrains of coronavirus stay-at-home conditions. The video analysis by using Tracker software was used to collect and process the experimental data for most of these labs. The lessons learned allowed us to confidently teach the full semester of the labs remotely the following Summer 2020 semester.

AAPT SM 20

Teaching the Introductory Laboratories Remotely: Lessons Learned

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mechanics

hands-on

Join AAPT and Physics Educators worldwide in developing and strengthening your professional connections by attending the 2021 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting. 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.

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AAPT SM 21

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.


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. 

Understanding the student experience with emergency remote teaching

Our Junior Lab requires four experiments per semester. In spring 2020 the final two experiments were done by students at home. They were asked to design their own experiments using available resources. Extra credit was given for an inventory of these resources, which varied quite widely amongst students. Details and computer code for one possible experiment was given to students: the use of mobile phone image sensors for cosmic ray detection. An alternative to the final experiment was to submit instead a white paper describing plans to develop an application of physics to the Covid19 pandemic; students were sent a primer on possible topics. Students were individually counseled on their projects by email and through Zoom meetings. The capacity of students to independently conceive of and execute experiments varied widely and revealed the need to better equip students with knowledge and skills to pose problems, deal with ambiguity, and work resourcefully with physical devices, materials, and supporting literature.

Student Design of Advanced Lab Experiments at Home using Available Resources

Many instructors have recently been thrust into the online delivery of physics courses. When Athabasca University pioneered distance education physics in the 1990s with standard freshman mechanics and E&M content, labs could not be done remotely. Then, calculators able to control detectors, such as sonic rangers, became available. A “home lab” approach was developed, which later extended to other subjects, allowing students to perform quality physics experiments with real data, using a lab kit borrowed from the library and sent by mail. Through time our highly successful home lab approach has changed to use what are now common household items like smartphones. We discuss how to implement physics home labs now and urge retaining them when “normal” status returns. In the overall adjustment to a post-COVID world, we argue that successes with our home labs show that this approach should become part of the “new normal”.

Hands-On Laboratories in Online Physics: For Now and Post-COVID

Graphs form an integral part during STEM education and the understanding of graphs is essential for the interpretation of data, critical thinking and reasoning in physics. Different previous works have shown that students struggle with specific difficulties, such as a confusion of slope and height, interpreting changes in height and changes in slope and the area underneath a curve. In this work we use eye tracking to study the question how the students' conceptual understanding of the slope and area concept is linked to the visual attention to different areas of a graph. Using machine learning and different gaze-based metrics, the eye-tracking data reveals characteristic visual strategies during solving of quantitative slope and area problems. The results allow the optimization of classifying correct and incorrect answers and the identification of underlying students’ difficulties.

Students’ visual strategies during physics line-graph problems

Graduate programs in physics education research: A USA based survey

An Instrument to Measure the Little-g in Teaching Labs

Student-Centered Approach to Online Radiation Experiments During a Pandemic

An Instructional Approach to Facilitate Introductory Physics Students’ Transfer of Learning

The recent pandemic has severely restricted in-person instruction in K-16 settings. A recently developed set of tools, PhyPhox, created in Germany, allow learners to harvest data directly using their cell phone. Experiments currently under development across a number of topics from mechanics ((In)elastic collisions, acceleration, pendulum motion) to audio analysis (Doppler effect, sonar, speed of sound) and creatively utilize multiple sensors to collect raw data. This free tool is available online and works across multiple cell phone platforms and services. Physics educators in RWTH Aachen University initially developed the tool and have collaborated with physics educators in New York State to develop and validate deployment strategies, including the use of instructional scaffolding approaches, video conferencing tools (including the use of breakout rooms for lab groups) and other appropriate techniques.

Using Cellphone Sensors for Data Collection

In a simple time of flight experiment, the speed of sound is observed to travel about 5% slower inside a corrugated irrigation pipe as compared with measurements conducted in open air. In addition to teaching students how to operate an oscilloscope to measure a known quantity, we suggest this slowing of sound might provide the sort of unanticipated finding that is a hallmark of recent, inquiry-based learning strategies, championed by Holmes and Wieman, but geared to an upper division, advanced lab audience. We propose an inquiry-based approach to this investigation wherein students must carefully evaluate the error in the measurement, concede that the finding is unexpected and apply critical thinking to decide how to resolve their observation in a second round of open-ended investigations.

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Teaching the Introductory Laboratories Remotely: Lessons Learned

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