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This study applies Multidimensional Item Response Theory (MIRT) analysis using confirmatory methods to the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA) to explore the assessment&#39;s structure and to determine an optimal model of student knowledge measured by the assessment. These methods were used to investigate a large dataset (N=9666) from a research university in the western United States. Confirmatory MIRT analysis fit a theoretical model developed from expert solutions to the instrument and identified two optimal models: an optimal principle model and an optimal topical model. The optimal principle model consisted of 28 principles, fundamental reasoning steps needed to solve items in the BEMA. A second model, the optimal topical model, consisted of five general subtopics of electromagnetism. Both the optimal principle and optimal topical model had excellent fit statistics.


AAPT SM 21

Multidimensional Item Response Theory and the BEMA: Modeling Student Thinking

modelling

mirt

bema

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This study applies Multidimensional Item Response Theory (MIRT) analysis using confirmatory methods to the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA) to explore the assessment's structure and to determine an optimal model of student knowledge measured by the assessment. These methods were used to investigate a large dataset (N=9666) from a research university in the western United States. Confirmatory MIRT analysis fit a theoretical model developed from expert solutions to the instrument and identified two optimal models: an optimal principle model and an optimal topical model. The optimal principle model consisted of 28 principles, fundamental reasoning steps needed to solve items in the BEMA. A second model, the optimal topical model, consisted of five general subtopics of electromagnetism. Both the optimal principle and optimal topical model had excellent fit statistics.


technical paper

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Learning Assistants (LA) are pivotal to non-traditional physics instruction in large classrooms. In this study, we used the framework of Pedagogical Content Knowledge for questioning (PCK-Q) to measure LAs’ questioning skills. We designed a written instrument describing various situations that LAs would encounter while interacting with students. LAs needed to articulate how they would support student learning considering their difficulties. We also developed a coding scheme to analyze how LAs’ questions leveraged students’ conceptual understanding. We administered this written instrument with LAs who had various years of experience in inquiry-based physics courses and analyzed their videos of interacting with students in online settings during the COVID pandemic. We validated the written instrument with class videos, delineated the LAs’ PCK-Q, and suggested how the LAs’ questions contributed to students’ conceptual learning about classical mechanics.

Measure student assistants’ PCK-Q in online settings during COVID pandemic

Learning Assistants (LAs) are increasingly used in classrooms all over the globe, where LAs help teach in a variety of student-centered, active-learning environments. The LA Model consists of three core components: the LA pedagogy course, weekly preparatory meetings with the instructional team, and the actual LA teaching
practice of working with small groups of students. In this paper we utilize an existing framework of essential pedagogy principles identified by Top et al. to develop a methodology for comparing what LAs learn in the pedagogy course to what they do in their LA practice. We apply the methodology to audio recordings of ten different LAs facilitating student discussion in five separate sections of an approximately 400 person, introductory studio physics course. We compare the degree to which LAs incorporate key concepts from the pedagogy class and propose ways to utilize our methodology to enhance the implementation of the LA Model.

Analysis of LA- and TA-facilitated group work in studio classrooms

Abstract: For decades, undergraduate physics programs have struggled with the underrepresentation of women. The STEP UP project (STEPUPphysics.org) was designed to reduce barriers for women in physics and encourage high school women to pursue an undergraduate physics degree. STEP UP focuses on implementing high school interventions by working with cohorts of high school physics teachers, called Ambassadors, who are trained to teach and propagate STEP UP’s research-driven materials throughout their networks. To understand the effects of training, surveys were administered to Ambassadors throughout the school year. Taking a “tempered radicals” framing, this talk will present an analysis of survey responses including how they changed after completing their Ambassadorship and how this information can be used to identify teachers who are willing to disrupt the status quo. Results should help other programs seeking to develop “tempered radicals” in their communities.

Identifying Shifts in Agency In the STEP UP Ambassador Program

We surveyed a national sample of United States physics faculty about
the COVID-19 transition to online learning. The majority of faculty
had 1-2 weeks to prepare and no prior experience with teaching online.
They relied on department peers to discuss approaches and used lecture
adaptations such as videoconferencing rather than new curricular
elements. Their responses were empathetic to the students' situation,
and 90% said they were average or above at implementing online
instruction. Faculty's preference for local resources and existing
methods suggests that in a crisis, strong network ties will dominate
as information sources, with consequences for professional development
and instructional change.

Transitions to online physics teaching: Empathy and above average quality

As part of an effort to examine student understanding of mathematical representations in quantum mechanics, online survey tasks were designed and administered to students at the end of their upper-division QM courses at several institutions. Virtual task-based clinical interviews were also conducted in the following semester with students at the University of Maine. Tasks were designed to find expressions and concepts that were related or viewed as similar in students’ minds, and to determine what concepts were ascribed to various expressions. Geometric concepts, including vectors and dot products, were used to describe various expressions, as were physical concepts such as quantum states and probabilities of physical measurements. Multiple physical and mathematical concepts were often invoked for a single expression, and vice versa. Sherin’s symbolic forms framework was used to guide analysis, and potential symbolic forms used by students for expressions in both Dirac notation and wave function notation were identified.

Student Conceptual Connections Within and Between Quantum Notations

From our experience teaching the spins-first Paradigms quantum mechanics course, students run into difficulties transitioning from discrete to continuous quantum systems. In computation, continuous structures like wavefunctions are necessarily discretized in order to be used in operations like numerical integration. Because of this feature, we believe that computation may naturally support the transition. Junior-level students at Oregon State University take a computational lab course where they numerically solve quantum mechanics problems by pair-programming in Python. This computational lab course is coordinated with the spins-first Paradigms course. We remotely interviewed six participants at the end of the courses. Participants completed a card-sorting task where they organized twenty cards with a variety of quantum mechanics content and representations. In this talk, we will discuss the ways participants organized this information, the overarching patterns, and the ways that students understand and coordinate discrete and continuous quantum systems.


Computation to Support Understanding of Discrete and Continuous Quantum Systems

In this study I surveyed student’s perceptions regarding the helpfulness of a color-coding scheme for introductory mechanics instructional materials. The use of color and color-coding (presenting corresponding items in different representations in the same color) has been shown to aid student learning through research in psychology and related disciplines, but little has been done to systematically study its effect within physics education. Color-coding was employed in three areas: matching words in physics principles with variables in their corresponding equations, matching equation variables with their corresponding representation in physics diagrams and pictures, and separating components in two-dimensional physics problems. Approximately 40 students over two semesters were anonymously surveyed regarding the perceived benefits and distractions of these three color-coding schemes. Students’ responses were majority positive, and identified the color-coding as helpful in engaging their attention and in identifying, matching, sorting, and tracking new information.

Color-coding and student perceptions of learning in introductory mechanics

Assessments provide opportunities for students to make sense of curriculum by connecting their existing ideas to generate new knowledge. As educators, we would like to be able to engage students in this process of sensemaking to help their learning. Through a case study, we present an approach to identifying assessment task features that facilitate sensemaking. The context involves an introductory student's attempt to a physics problem. We analyze the student's transcript through the lens of sensemaking epistemic game and note the student's actions (`moves') while solving the problem. By analyzing these moves, we argue that the assessment features that played a role in the student's sensemaking can be identified. We find that the presence of a real-world context, engaging with multiple representations, and requiring a physical interpretation of a numerical answer to be instrumental in student's sensemaking. Identifying task features in this way can be instrumental in designing future assessment tasks that increase the chances students engage in sensemaking while working on them.

How modeling informs students’ engagement in sensemaking

Previous literature about students’ understanding of heat and temperature emphasizes students’ misunderstandings of canonical physics concepts. In our study, we used a resources-oriented approach to analyze data from 653 students’ responses to questions about thermal phenomena, highlighting ways in which their responses could serve valuable resources for continued learning. We categorized our findings into three common conceptual resources. These resources can be used to strengthen teaching methods by using students’ understanding of heat and temperature, to foster their learning processes and help them to develop more advanced physics ideas.



Exploring Student Conceptual Resources About Heat and Temperature

Much existing physics education research (PER) on student ideas about momentum focuses on the difficulties that students face when learning this topic. These difficulties are framed as obstacles for students to overcome in order to develop correct understandings of physics. Our research takes a resources-oriented approach to analyzing student responses to momentum questions, viewing student ideas as valuable and potentially productive for learning, over and above their correctness. Here, we highlight four conceptual resources that provide insight into students’ ideas about momentum, which are the conservation resource, direction resource, collisions resource and properties resource These resources are context-dependent and can be elicited and built on by instructors to support students in developing more complex and sophisticated understandings of physics.

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Multidimensional Item Response Theory and the BEMA: Modeling Student Thinking

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