United States

Those seeking to change the policies, practices, and cultures of universities to support effective educational practices often find it a challenge. To navigate this work, change efforts are increasingly being focused at the department-level, including two models for departmentally-based change: the Departmental Action Team (DAT) Project and Teaching Quality Framework (TQF) Initiative. In the DAT Project, externally-facilitated working groups, comprised of students, faculty, and staff, pursue collectively-determined projects aimed at improving the undergraduate experience in their department. In the TQF Initiative, externally-facilitated working groups of faculty (modeled on the DAT Project) focus on transforming teaching evaluation practices in their department. To better understand these related models of institutional change, we conducted interviews with individuals from the DAT Project and TQF Initiative, including facilitators and grant PIs. We present results that give insight into outcomes of these models, impacts of differences between the models, and avenues for growth in the models.

PERC SM 20

Improving education through departmental change: a comparison of approaches

departmental change

institutional change

change

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.


AAPT SM 20

poster

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.

There are many recent calls to transform lab courses to better engage students in authentic scientific practices and develop their views on the nature of science. To address these calls and support local desire for an improved lab curriculum, we have begun to work with Fort Lewis College faculty, staff, and students to transform their introductory mechanics lab to improve student learning of experimental physics. Here, we describe our preliminary work in which we sought community engagement and input on goals and content for the labs. We did this through in-depth interviews with faculty, classroom observations, student reflections, and through the formation of a Student Advisory Council. From these sources, we developed a set of guidelines and consensus learning goals, which will inform the creation of the transformed lab course.

Process of transforming of an introductory mechanics lab course at Fort Lewis College

Many students tend to provide intuitively appealing (but incorrect) responses to some physics questions despite demonstrating (on isomorphic questions) the formal knowledge necessary to reason correctly. These inconsistencies in reasoning are persistent and remain even after evidence-based instruction. This project probed whether a collaborative group exam could serve not only as an innovative assessment tool but also as an instructional intervention that helps addresses persistent reasoning difficulties. Specifically, students were given opportunities to revisit their answers to questions known to elicit intuitively appealing responses in a collaborative group exam component immediately following a traditional individual exam. The efficacy of this approach was compared to that of a more traditional instructor-led exam review session. Both approaches yielded moderate improvements in performance on the final exam. However, additional multi-faceted data analysis provided further insights into student reasoning difficulties that suggested further implication for instruction and research.

Investigating a collaborative group exam as an instructional tool to address student reasoning difficulties that remain even after instruction (PERC)

We describe a study in which a validated motivational survey was used to investigate the effect of working in mixed or same-gender groups on physics self-efficacy and "peer effect on self-efficacy" in a calculus-based introductory physics course in which women are severely underrepresented. Compared to those who mostly worked alone, those who worked in a group, in general, reported that their peers increased their physics self-efficacy. Moreover, for both women and men, working in same-gender groups resulted in a "protective effect" for those who reported low physics self-efficacy in that students in same gender groups with low and high self-efficacy had smaller variations in their peer effect on self-efficacy scores than those who worked in mixed gender groups. While these effects held for both men and women, the average scores on physics self-efficacy, sense of belonging and peer effect on self-efficacy were higher for men in each of these categories.

The additional benefit of working in same-gender groups on students’ self-efficacy in introductory physics

Design Principles to Support Physics and Engineering Learning in Complementary Classrooms and Field Trip Activities

Students scores on assessments play a vital role in course modifications, though their effectiveness relies on the quality of the interpretation of these scores. We adapt the notion of assessments as a change agent so that a well-developed rubric accompanied by intentionally designed instructor feedback can act as a tool to inform course improvement. In conjunction with work developing a standardized upper-division thermal physics assessment, this pilot work articulates a methodology to determine feedback for instructors to inform how well their courses support students in meeting learning goals. In this paper, we present an example using a task targeting the scientific practice of using mathematics to explicate this methodology. This work highlights the importance of assessment feedback to inform explicit course modifications in physics.

Assessment feedback: A tool to promote scientific practices in upper-division

Student beliefs and faculty beliefs about study strategies are not always aligned. Using the Effective Study Strategies Survey, student beliefs about study strategies were surveyed for three semesters at a two-year college which is also a Hispanic Serving Institution. Then faculty were asked to predict how students answered on average to a subset of the questions on the student survey. The comparison between faculty predictions and student responses is discussed. Asking the faculty in a department to predict how their students responded to a survey is a useful way of determining where alignment between faculty and student belief already exists and where it needs improvement.

Comparison of student-reported study habits with faculty expectations and predictions

We present a set of modes of reasoning about ratio and proportion as a means of operationalizing expert practice in physics. These modes, or natures of proportional reasoning, stem from consideration of how physicists reason in context and are informed by prior work in physics and mathematics education. We frame the natures as the core of an emerging framework for proportional reasoning in introductory physics, that will categorize the uses of proportional reasoning in introductory physics contexts, and provide guidance for the development of reliable assessments. We share results from preliminary assessment items indicating that university physics students have difficulty interpreting and applying ratios in context.

Toward a Framework for the Natures of Proportional Reasoning in Introductory Physics

Learning Assistant (LA) programs support instructors transforming their courses to use evidence-based instructional strategies. We investigated the types of institutions that have LA programs to better understand how the distribution of those programs supports education across institutions. Using public websites and databases, we compared 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. The results indicated that the majority of LA programs were at large-enrollment, public, research-intensive, four-year institutions. Minority serving institutions (MSIs) were equally well represented in the institutions with LA programs. MSIs with LA programs were, however, more likely than non-MSIs with LA programs to be teaching-intensive or two-year colleges. Further expanding the LA model into teaching-intensive and two-year colleges will more equitably share the benefits of the LA model with students from minoritized groups.

Characteristics of institutions with Learning Assistant programs: An equity investigation (PERC)

[This abstract represents one part of a two-part study; some language is reproduced in another abstract.] Our team is studying student ownership of projects, a significant learning outcome in many project-based lab courses. An empirical model of ownership will support educators and researchers in the practice, design, and implementation of courses that encourage student ownership. Our preliminary model was based on analysis of a subset of survey and interview data from five Western and Midwestern physics departments. In this talk, I will demonstrate how this ownership model maps onto our full dataset, including stimulated recall interviews, and what educational implications emerge from further analysis. In our model, ownership is more than an outcome that develops over time and is achieved by the projects end. Students may or may not experience ownership in any of three phases: choice of topic, execution of methods, and synthesis of results into reports or presentations.

Student Ownership of Lab Projects: Project Phases

We are developing a new research based assessment (RBA) focused on quantitative reasoning--rather than conceptual understanding--in physics contexts. We rapidly moved administration of the RBA online in Spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We present our experiences with online, unproctored administration of an RBA in development to students enrolled in a large-enrollment, calculus-based, introductory physics course. We describe our attempts to adhere to best practices on a limited time frame, and present a preliminary analysis of the results, comparing results from the online administration to earlier results from in-person, proctored administration. We include discussion of online administration of multiple-choice/multiple-response (MCMR) items, which we use on the instrument as a way to probe multiple facets of student reasoning. Our initial comparison indicates little difference between online and paper administrations of the RBA, consistent with previous work by other researchers.

Improving education through departmental change: a comparison of approaches

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Process of transforming of an introductory mechanics lab course at Fort Lewis College

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