United States

Computational thinking has been emphasized as a main science and engineering practice in the Next Generation Science Standards. However, learning objectives outlined by the standards are written in vague terms that complicate the implementation and assessment of this topic in the classroom. This is especially problematic for high school teachers who have limited experience with computation and are looking to integrate computational modeling in their physics or physical science classrooms. In this study, we explore the variation in computational thinking practices that physics students demonstrate when working through in-class coding activities. Video data of multiple student groups were collected in one high school teachers physics and physical science classrooms. The data were analyzed to create a codebook that describes the different ways students engage in computational thinking practices. Ultimately, this work will help practitioners better understand how to identify these practices in a high school physics setting.

PERC SM20

Video Analysis of Variation in Computational Thinking Practices in Physics (PERC)

computational thinking

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.

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 SM20

poster

What happens to aspiring engineers who do not pass their introductory mechanics class? At UIUC, approximately 11 percent of introductory mechanics engineering students earn a D, F, or W. Just 31 percent of these students go on to earn an engineering degree, compared with the 87 percent of students who pass the course on their first attempt. While most students who perform poorly in their introductory physics class choose a non-engineering major or leave the university altogether, there is a unique subset of initially struggling students who choose to persist in an engineering major. We interviewed engineering seniors in this group to learn about their experiences as engineering students who overcame an initial setback. On this poster, we will share big-picture outcomes for students who retake this fundamental course as well as insights into the difficulties some students face and what resources may help them succeed.

When the Gatekeeper Says No: Mechanics Students' Resilience and Success

Undergraduate students are a critical resource for university-community partnerships designed to provide enriching learning opportunities for students who have limited exposure to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). University physics departments who offer outreach programs are often dependent upon undergraduate facilitators to run successfully; however, there is minimal research on this population relative to the youth populations for which outreach programs are designed. Our study investigates the experiences and perspectives of women and non-binary undergraduates who supported The STEMinist Program, an afterschool program designed to engage girls and non-binary youth (ages 9-18) in discussions and explorations with female-identifying scientists and engineers. Analysis of interviews from 13 undergraduate facilitators suggest that educational programs designed for youth may be just as valuable for undergraduate facilitators. These findings can be used to inform physics outreach program development and strengthen the potential benefits of program participation for undergraduates as well as youth participants.

Supporting Undergraduate Facilitators to Strengthen Physics Outreach Programs

Earning a bachelor's degree is expensive and time-consuming. Many undergraduate students pursue Advanced Placement (AP) courses in high school or transfer coursework from degree-granting institutions. However, the effect of those transfer courses on the time that it takes students to graduate (time-to-degree) is currently not well understood. We have investigated how incoming transfer courses impact students' time-to-degree by defining three independent groups of transfer students: (1) those entering with college level transfer courses, (2) those with only AP level transfer courses, and (3) those without any transfer credit. The time-to-degree has been shown to be statistically different for each of these groups, with students who enter with college level transfer courses graduating the earliest. We have explored differences in time-to-degree for various demographic information (e.g. gender, race/ethnicity). Cohen's d results suggest disproportionate negative effects on the time-to-degree for women and students of color, in particular. These results provide implications toward how universities advertise graduation in four years, as well as other impacts toward student financial aid such as four-year scholarships.

Analyzing Time-to-Degree for Transfer Students at a Large Midwestern University

Planetariums visits limit the amount of time and agency people have to explore content relevant to their interest and identities as compared to other informal learning environments. We developed the Dome+ model to guide extending engagement beyond planetariums based on the design principles of identity, interest, and choice. We do this through web resources, social media, and hands-on activities centered on a planetarium show. We present research into the development and implementation of the Dome+ model as it applies to the Big Astronomy Project. This is a multi-institutional effort to share the stories of the people and places that make astronomy happen. The work presented focuses on the implementation of the model during production of the planetarium show. We interviewed team members key in the production of the show and find themes that differ based on project role. We also discuss practical challenges in implementing the Dome+ model.

Extending Learning Beyond the Planetarium with the Dome+ Model

Students often struggle to decompose a vector, especially when calculating the vector components of an object on an inclined plane. In this study, we designed a vector survey in the context of physics and implemented it in an undergraduate university. Our preliminary studies indicate the students' learning difficulties in vector decompositions on incline problems. The analysis of the students' responses shows that placing a vector at the position with geometric convenience instead of the center of mass can help them identify angles and calculate vector components more accurately. Based on our current study, we observe an improvement in performance, when students are provided with the formula of vector components along with the definition of the angle in the formula sheet.

Decomposition of forces on inclined planes

We report results from a study designed to identify links between undergraduate students' views about experimental physics and their engagement in multiweek projects in lab courses. Using surveys and interviews, we explored whether students perceived particular classroom activities to be features of experimental physics practice. We focused on 18 activities, including maintaining lab notebooks, fabricating parts, and asking others for help. Interviewees identified activities related to project execution as intrinsic to experimental physics practice based on high prevalence of those activities in interviewees' own projects. Fabrication-oriented activities were identified as conditional features of experimentation based on differences between projects, which interviewees attributed to variations in project resources. Interpersonal activities were also viewed as conditional features of experimentation, dependent upon one's status as novice or expert. Our findings suggest that students' views on experimental physics are shaped by firsthand experiences of their own projects and secondhand experiences of those of others.

Student perceptions of laboratory classroom activities and experimental physics practice

In 2019, Living Physics Portal (livingphysicsportal.org) project leaders (NSF grant 1624185) in collaboration with the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) administered a survey to physics faculty designed to document current pedagogical beliefs and practices in teaching introductory physics for life sciences (IPLS) courses. 383 instructors (out of 762 respondents) reported that they had, in the past two years, taught an IPLS course. We analyzed the beliefs of these instructors about the effectiveness of their IPLS courses in engaging students and examined predictors of differences in their perceived course effectiveness. We found that nearly half viewed their course as moderately effective in engaging students and there was considerable variability in respondents answers. Hierarchical regression analyses identified teaching experience, perceptions of belongingness to a community of practice, and self-reported teaching strategies as independent predictors of perceived course effectiveness. We will discuss our findings and their implications for the IPLS community.

Teaching Experience, Community of Practice Beliefs, and Teaching Strategies Predict IPLS Course Effectiveness

To address the longstanding problem of underrepresentation of women in physics, we developed two classroom interventions that encourage womens future physics intentions. In testing these lessons in a larger study, we found variance in gains between student sub-populations across several teachers. This prompted the current mixed methods analysis to follow up on potential contextual factors leading to these differences, including social and economic setting of the school and student population characteristics, as well as teacher-level effects. We drew upon multiple sources of data collected from both teachers and students including teacher interviews, teacher and student open response surveys, and student artifacts from the lessons. In our preliminary analysis, we found that the broader social and economic environments did not appear to affect how students received the lessons; however, individual teacher implementation of the lessons did.

Believe that they can achieve: How Teacher Attitudes Toward Physics Impact Student Outcomes

In a previous study, we found that that students' incoming preparation in physics--crudely measured by concept inventory prescores and math SAT or ACT scores--explains 34\% of the variation in Physics 1 final exam scores at [Redacted] University. In this study, to understand the variation in exam scores not explained by these measures of incoming preparation, we interviewed 34 students with weak preparation about their experiences in the course. We did not find there to be many different idiosyncratic issues they felt were important, but rather there were a set of practices and attitudes common to many students. Some of these practices, such as certain study habits, were surprisingly unrelated to student performance. Others, including certain types of collaborative interactions between students, were predictive of course performance after controlling for prior preparation. These results offer some guidance as to how instructors might improve the experience and performance of the less prepared students in Physics 1. These findings are for a small, relatively select sample, but we anticipate that many of the results will apply across a broader student population.

Hidden Variables: Predicting Student Performance in Introductory Physics

This paper explores the remarkable success of one 7th grade student as she discovers foundational concepts of magnetism while engaging in an NGSS-aligned unit on modeling magnetism. Student success in modeling is of particular interest in the PER community, through understanding how students are able to create mechanistic models, we can reveal core practices which in turn can be used to inform instructional design. Here we examine one student who was able to synthesize the key concepts of magnetism: that a magnet is comprised of microscopic magnetic dipoles and that the orientation of these dipoles determines the orientation of the macroscopic polarity. We present significant excerpts of the progression of the modeling process in order to illustrate her iterative use of evidence to guide her reasoning, her use of prior knowledge, and the roles of teachers and peers.

Video Analysis of Variation in Computational Thinking Practices in Physics (PERC)

Next from PERC SM20

When the Gatekeeper Says No: Mechanics Students' Resilience and Success

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