United States

The transition to remote or hybrid laboratories was difficult for many institutions that primarily relied on in-person instruction. After my own research as well as conversations with colleagues and peer institutes, I have compiled a summary of the different techniques I have seen employed at different institutes to accommodate remote and hybrid laboratory styles. I hope this summary is helpful to anyone still struggling with moving their labs into an online world.

AAPT SM 21

Laboratory Strategies in a Hybrid World

remote

hybrid

laboratory

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technical paper

During a recent discussion in PICUP (Partnership for Integration of Computation into Undergraduate Physics), it was noted that once a simulation is in hand, students don’t necessarily see the connection between the simulation and the “real world”. This presentation will demonstrate several examples of making that connection of simulation to world. As a first step, a simulation can be calibrated for digital world consistency, e.g., is a pixels-per-second animation visually accurate? As a next step, when a known physical system is modeled, is the model true to the system? And a further, most powerful step is to run simulations side-by-side with the corresponding physical system. Representative examples will be presented of simulations coded up in Python by high-school physics students, and issues discussed.

Connecting Simulations to The World

Ownership is a significant learning goal in many project-based lab courses. An empirical model of ownership will support educators in the practice, design, and implementation of courses that encourage student ownership. In this talk, I will present results of a collaborative, fine-grained analysis on 15 student interviews from 5 Western and Mid-Western institutions. In prior work, our research team described ownership as a relationship among students and their projects that spans three project phases: choosing a topic, executing research methods, and creating deliverables. In each phase, combinations of material, cognitive, social, and affective student interactions compose student-project ownership. This talk will feature emergent social interaction sub-themes, such as student ‘interpersonal conflicts’ and ‘troubleshooting’; and instructor ‘coaching’ and ‘articulation’. Elaboration on these themes could point toward pedagogical guidelines that support student feelings of ownership, while also avoiding negative outcomes created by unbalanced project-roles and other conflicts. 


Student Ownership of Lab Projects: The role of interpersonal interactions

In this talk I will describe a course I developed and taught for the spring 2021 semester as part of a new general education requirement on power and justice. We start by looking at the history of exclusion in physics as well as the currently existing structures and practices that push out members of minoritized groups at various stages of the academic pipeline. The latter part of the course focuses on the roles and responsibilities of physicists in public policy, culminating in an outward-facing project in which students develop policy alternatives for controversial contemporary issues. I will discuss my journey to becoming more comfortable having difficult conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as lessons I learned along the way. 


Physics and Society: a course on power, justice, and policy

In this paper, we have practically studied the effect of various resistances (frictional forces, air resistances, viscous forces, etc.) on applied force. It has been found that in every action some part of the applied force is required to overcome the effect of resistances; and when applied force exceeds that amount of applied force only then a body can accelerates. As per study, the existing Newton's equation (F = ma) calculates only the applied force of accelerated bodies and does not count the effect of various resistances till bodies stays stationary or accelerates. Hence, a mathematical expression (F = ma+r) has been provided by including a factor describing above said resistances.

Modification of Newton's Second Law of Motion

Quality IPLS courses require examples which are biologically and/or chemically authentic. Creating such examples can be challenging for faculty not trained in these disciplines. What are some tools for creating such examples? How can such authentic examples motivate the topics to include in such a course? How can such examples be used to provide overarching themes to IPLS courses? These questions will be explored in the context of a large-enrollment (300-600 student) course taught both in a lecture hall and in a synchronous-optional online course at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Centering Units on Biologically and Chemically Authentic Contexts in IPLS-II

IPLS development, while richly recorded in recent PER literature and online resources, is primarily represented within the context of either large research universities or high-profile liberal arts colleges. This talk concerns preliminary research on an IPLS-appropriate course population in an introductory algebra-based physics course at a primarily-undergraduate regional comprehensive state university in the Southern US. The author’s experience pursuing IPLS research in this environment will guide the talk with three trains of thought: first, how investigations into IPLS at a non-research university have begun from a PER perspective; second, an overview of findings for this population the limitations that affect the implementation of the research; and third, discussion of plans and issues with moving forward from the findings, within a non-research university context.

IPLS Research and Teaching at a Non-Research State University

For 20 years I have taught a two-semester undergraduate sequence in physics for the life sciences: Biological Physics in the fall and Medical Physics in the spring. A typical student takes the courses after completing a traditional introductory physics sequence (the two classes are independent, and can be taken individually or together in any order). The courses emphasize mathematically analyzing models applicable to the life sciences, and assume the student has at least a semester of calculus. Biological Physics covers biomechanics, fluid dynamics, exponential growth, heat, diffusion, osmotic pressure, bioelectricity, biomagnetism, and feedback. Medical Physics covers imaging, tomography, ultrasound, optics, x-rays, nuclear medicine, and magnetic resonance imaging. Most students major in physics, medical physics, or biomedical engineering, although occasionally an ambitious premed, biology, or chemistry student enrolls. A primary goal of the courses is for students to learn how to use mathematical models to gain insight into biological processes.

Two-Semester Intermediate Course Sequence in Physics for the Life Sciences

We discuss an investigation of upper-level undergraduate and graduate students’ difficulties with fundamental concepts involving a system of identical particles. The investigation was carried out in advanced quantum mechanics courses by administering written questions and conducting individual interviews with students. We find that students share many common difficulties related to these quantum mechanical concepts.

Student Difficulties with a System of Identical Particles

In a prior study, we investigated graduate student reasoning on a set of entropy-related conceptual tasks in a think-aloud format. The tasks involved entropy from microscopic and macroscopic perspectives, ideal gases, and a novel context involving a system with a dynamic string. In the current study, we conducted interviews with undergraduates using the same questionnaire. Most students were interviewed during the second half of their upper-division Thermal Physics course at the University of Colorado Boulder while two were upper-division undergraduates from other institutions with strong physics programs. We analyze the responses of the undergraduates to a section of the interview involving a novel system of a dynamic string waving in a bath of water and discuss the similarities and differences between the undergraduate and graduate students' responses. The responses from the two populations share many similarities with a few noteworthy exceptions. The undergraduates generally did not produce multiple macrostate classifications in the novel system, and some expressed a concern with what they perceived to be an infinite number of microstates---and thus infinite entropy---which was not a concern among the graduate students.

Comparing undergraduate and graduate student reasoning on conceptual entropy questionnaire

Quantum information science (QIS) courses have, until now, rarely been a subject of study in the PER community, due in part to their interdisciplinary nature and relatively recent emergence as a widespread curricular topic. We surveyed 116 faculty identified as developing or having taught undergraduate or graduate QIS courses in the US. We have received 26 complete responses, a response rate of 22%. Faculty were asked to describe the structure of the course, as well as any observed student difficulties or identified instructional needs. We also collected basic demographic data such as class size and departmental affiliation. We report on the findings of this survey, with an emphasis on identifying core content areas as well as specific student and instructor difficulties. We expect these findings to be useful in guiding future efforts to develop curricular and/or assessment tools for QIS courses.

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