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The use of the Physics GRE in graduate admissions has gained considerable attention in recent years. While studies have shown the problematic nature of the exam quantitatively, it is time that student experiences were also included in the discussion. We interviewed 69 current graduate physics and astronomy students about their process of deciding where to apply to graduate school. Physics GRE requirements played a substantial role in this decision, with 48 students mentioning the test as part of their process to narrow programs down to a personalized short-list. Potential barriers (e.g., financial and travel) that affected some students, but not others, create an unequal playing field for grad school applicants. These results suggest that graduate programs requiring the Physics GRE are doing more than asking prospective graduate students to simply take a physics test, and may be inadvertently disadvantaging the very students that they are trying to recruit.

PERC SM 20

Physics GRE Requirements Create Uneven Playing Field for Graduate Applicants

physics gre graduate education diversity

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.

Listen to internationally known plenary speakers, attend sessions, workshops, and special activities. Attending the virtual summer meeting is an excellent opportunity to share your expertise and learn from and network with leaders in the field.

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AAPT SM 21

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.

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?

A number of well-established research scales are available to assess students interest in German physics lessons. One common scale differentiates between the interest that students show in physical contents and their interest in physics lessons (Hoffman et al., 1998). In addition, a scale widely used in educational psychology distinguishes between the emotional significance of an activity and the perceived significance of its content (Krapp, 2010). So far, these two constructs have largely been used unrelated. Against this background we have decided to integrate both constructs in a questionnaire for our current study to assess high school students interest in physics (N = 1529). Our collected data suggests that the previous combined constructs need to be revised as two of four scales seem to coincide in one. The poster will report in more detail on our data and the proposed newly structured interest scales.

Measuring students’ interest in physics

As Carl Sagan observed, learning astronomy can be "humbling and character-building." Can it also help students overcome self-doubts---including those arising from stereotype threat---by providing perspective? We conducted a study of self-reported student experiences in a large-enrollment general-education astronomy course. Volunteers completed an initial survey probing self-efficacy, perceived academic control, and growth mindset; a short survey after each lecture probing attitude changes; and a repeat of the initial survey. We identified the content and activities associated with the most impactful class meetings. Specific days were clearly unusually impactful; these generally corresponded to course content emphasizing the spatial and temporal scales of the universe, addressing our place in the universe, or connecting to students' personal experiences. Nevertheless, we found no significant changes in or correlations with self-efficacy, perceived academic control, or growth mindset.

Legacy of the Pale Blue Dot: Can introductory astronomy experiences impact mindset and self-efficacy?

College faculty commonly participate in professional development to learn how to improve their teaching. Typically after the program finishes there is little support for faculty to bring new teaching practices into their classrooms. By employing the Situative Perspective and Pedagogical Reasoning and Action, we investigate how faculty take up ideas from a professional development program and the factors that influence their instructional design choices. In this study we investigate a program that aims to bring Three-Dimensional Learning (3DL) into undergraduate STEM classrooms. During this program participants are tasked with creating a teachable unit that aligns with 3DL. Using interviews, fellowship recordings, and online forum responses we look at two different faculty members, Ron and Charlie, and investigate influences that impact their design of classroom materials. Moving forward, we plan to expand the case study to more participants in order to explore how these influences effect the design of professional development programs.

How Faculty Take Up Ideas from a Professional Development Setting

Analysis of stochastic processes can be used to engender critical thinking. Quantum dots have a reversible, stochastic transition between luminescent and nonluminescent states. The luminescence intermittency is known as blinking and is not evident from ensemble measurements. In order to stimulate critical thinking, students design, perform, and analyze a semiconductor quantum dot blinking laboratory experiment. The design of the experiment and stochastic nature of the data collected require students to make judgements throughout the course of the single-particle measurement and analysis. Some of the decisions do not have uniquely correct answers, challenging the students to engage in critical thinking. We propose that students self-examined decision making develops a constructivist view of science. The experiment is visually striking, is interdisciplinary, and develops higher order thinking.

“It’s Fundamental”: Quantum Dot Blinking Experiment to Teach Critical Thinking

[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 prior work, we described ownership as a relationship between students and their projects. Material, cognitive, and affective student-project interactions composed the resulting ownership model. These interactions included student contributions to their projects, student understanding of project topics, and student emotional responses to progress and setbacks.

Student Ownership of Lab Projects: Manifestation in Student-Project Interactions

Mentorship in the sciences often serves two general purposes: to equip students with the technical skills necessary to be successful in their field and to provide them with emotional support, sponsorship, and a sense of belonging in the scientific community. While both of these aspects of mentorship are important, emphasis is often placed on the teaching of technical skills rather than on the formation of a student's identity as a scientist. As part of a holistic study of student experiences in three undergraduate research programs at a large research institution, this paper focuses on the role of psychosocial mentorship, in particular the role of the mentor in developing the mentees sense of belonging to a community, as perceived by faculty mentors and student mentees within the programs.

Examining effective mentorship in undergraduate research experiences in physics

We extend research on physics identity beyond introductory physics by using five years of cross-sectional data collected from validated motivational surveys administered to physics majors throughout their undergraduate education and to the first year physics Ph.D. students at a large research university in the US. The responses of physics majors over time from their first year of the undergraduate curriculum through the first year of graduate school remain largely consistent, indicating that students are constantly adjusting their interpretation of the survey items to match the current level of expertise expected of them. Moreover, we find that, consistent with prior studies with introductory physics students, perceived recognition is the best predictor of physics identity for physics majors throughout their entire education in physics, pointing to the importance of physics instructors making a concerted effort to constantly recognize their students throughout.

Recognition always matters: A cross-sectional study of the physics identity of physics majors

This paper reports on initial work to develop a framework on empowerment through physics education. While the literature on empowerment through physics is limited, we have adapted theories and expert opinions from psychology and education to build this framework, alongside leveraging student reflections from four university courses using a curricular approach that supports student induction of physics principles. The resulting framework contains five dimensions of empowerment through physics: academic, social, political, emotional, and epistemic. We outline and give examples of students written work where we believe markers of these dimensions are manifested. We also identify self-advocacy as a thread that connects each dimension and discuss opportunities for future research on empowerment in the physics classroom.

The physics classroom as a space for empowerment

"Augmented Reality (AR) allows the integration of virtual visualizations into real-world environments. Recent research highlights benefits regarding its use towards knowledge acquisition and cognitive load in various instructional scenarios.
We transformed a traditional inquiry-based laboratory experiment examining simple DC circuits into an AR-based learning environment. Using smartglasses, real-time measurement data is visualized as virtual external representations next to the corresponding real-world objects, e.g. a resistor. Hereby we fulfill the instructional design principles of spatial and temporal contiguity from the cognitive theory of multimedia learning.
In a graded introductory lab course with N=56 students we compared our AR-based approach with a two-dimensional visualization of the same content on a tablet-PC. The results show a large overall effect for conceptual learning, but no significant group differences in learning gain or cognitive load.
We present the implementation of the learning environment as well as the first results of the evaluation."

Augmented Reality Visualizations in Undergraduate Physics Laboratory Courses

An approach to the design of curriculum supporting student engagement in mathematical sense making (MSM) is discussed. This approach draws from a categorical framework for MSM that is situated in the PER and science education literature on mathematical modeling and sense making. Two pieces of curricula spanning both content (the photoelectric effect and geometric optics) and course context (STEM-major versus non-STEM-major) designed using this framework are analyzed for the reasoning structures they are designed to scaffold.

Next from PERC SM 20

Measuring students’ interest in physics

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