United States

In support of movements like Black Lives Matter, #ShutdownAcademia, and #ShutdownSTEM, I knew I needed to address social justice issues in my introductory physics classroom as well as increase my efforts to ensure a safe, equitable, and inclusive space for my undergraduate students. Due to the ongoing pandemic, these changes would need to happen in a primarily remote learning environment. This poster will explore the strategies and technology I utilized over the past academic year to create a more supportive, accessible, and inclusive remote learning environment for my calculus-based introductory physics courses. I will be sharing feedback from students and results of formal assessments looking at changes in students’ science identity responses over the course of the year. I will also share my thoughts regarding how a well-designed remote learning environment may provide even more productive discussions on tough topics such as social justice than similar in-person environments.

AAPT SM21

Exploring Ways to Make a Remote Physics Classroom More Inclusive

diversity; equity; inclusion

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poster

The abstract nature of electricity makes it a particularly difficult subject for learners to form scientific understandings of the core concepts. One possibility of making such abstract concepts more accessible is using analogical teaching methods. In light of this, a syllabus was developed focusing on the analogy between the movement of charge due to potential difference and the movement of air due to pressure difference. Trials of this syllabus in German grammar schools show a significant improvement in learning gains when compared with traditional approaches. Learners’ qualitative understanding is scaffolded using helpful language, color-coding the electric potential and links to familiar, everyday experiences. The materials used in the previous study have been translated into English and adjusted for use in public schools. Furthermore, additional materials to help structure lessons for less experienced and non-subject-specialist teaching staff are included in lesson packs. All materials will be made available free of charge.

Material Development for Teaching Electric Circuits with the Pressure Analogy

We conducted research on student difficulties and used it as a guide to develop, validate and evaluate a quantum interactive learning tutorial (QuILT) on Larmor precession of spin to help students learn about time-dependence of expectation values in quantum mechanics. The QuILT builds on students' prior knowledge and strives to help them develop a good knowledge structure of relevant concepts. It adapts visualization tools to help students develop intuition about these topics and focuses on helping students integrate qualitative and quantitative understanding. Here, we summarize the development, validation and in-class evaluation. We thank the National Science Foundation for support.

Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorial on Larmor Precession of Spin

In quantum mechanics, representations of quantum operators in the position or momentum representation is an important concept for students to learn. However, many students have difficulties writing operators in the position and momentum representations. We investigated student difficulties with quantum operators in the position or momentum representation in the context of Dirac notation so that we can use them to develop learning tools such as a Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorial (QuILT) to help students develop a robust understanding of these concepts. Here we describe the investigation of student difficulties. We thank the National Science Foundation for support.

Student understanding of quantum mechanical observables and corresponding operators

Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) is an instructional strategy involving feedback from students on pre-lecture activities in order to design in-class activities to build on the continuing feedback from students. We investigated the effectiveness of a JiTT approach, which included in-class concept tests using clickers in an upper-division quantum mechanics course. We analyzed student performance on pre-lecture reading quizzes, in-class clicker questions answered individually, and clicker questions answered after group discussion, and compared those performances with open-ended retention quizzes administered after all instructional activities on the same concepts. In general, compared to the reading quizzes, student performance improved when individual clicker questions were posed after lectures that focused on student difficulties found via electronic feedback. The performance on the clicker questions after group discussion following individual clicker question responses also showed improvement. We discuss some possible reasons for improved performance at various stages. We thank the National Science Foundation for support.

Just-in-Time Teaching and Peer Instruction in a Quantum Mechanics Course

In this paper we offer updated versions of two 1970's-vintage open world experiments (one on acceleration, and the other on Poisson statistics). We the discuss prospects for expanding these to a wider range of topics, as well as some of the challenges and opportunities for giving students a more active role in experimental design, and scientific reporting, with help from now widely available electronic technologies.

Bringing new life to open-world physics lab experiments

Societal stereotypes and biases pertaining to who belongs in physics and who can excel in physics can impact motivational beliefs, e.g., of women and racial and ethnic minority students in physics courses. This study investigates how the learning environment predicts male and female students’ motivational beliefs including physics self-efficacy, interest, and identity at the end of year long (spanning two-semester) algebra-based introductory physics courses. These were courses at a large university in the US taken primarily by biological science majors many of whom are interested in health professions. Although women are not underrepresented in these physics courses, societal stereotypes and biases internalized by female students over their lifetime can still impact their motivational beliefs about physics. Our findings show gender gap in motivational beliefs favoring men. These findings can be useful to provide support and create an equitable and inclusive learning environment to help all students excel in these courses.

How the learning environment predicts students’ motivational beliefs in physics

Modified Module Analysis (MMA) has proven to be a productive method for studying physics conceptual inventories. MMA can be used to analyze large datasets by forming networks of item responses then using community detection algorithms to identify responses that are consistently selected together. MMA has been applied to many physics instruments, such as the Force Concept Inventory, identifying underlying misconceptions measured by the instrument and providing insight into the structure of those misconceptions. In this study, MMA was applied to over 8000 pretest and post-test responses to the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS). The CLASS was separated into “expert-like” and “unexpert-like” responses, corresponding to the responses that were chosen by experts in physics. The communities present in the networks naturally separated into expert-like and unexpert-like communities. These communities were analyzed to determine coherent structure in the instrument and in students’ attitudes about science.

Network Analysis of the CLASS

Within whiteness, the organization of social life is in terms of a center and margins that are based on dominance, control, and a transcendent figure that is consistently and structurally ascribed value over and above other figures. In this poster, we use an example from an introductory physics course to show how whiteness is reproduced in physics classroom spaces, and we name some of the mechanisms that facilitate that reproduction.

Seeing Whiteness in Introductory Physics: A Case Study

Breaking free from the traditional “cart on a ramp” problem, this session presents a variety of real-world, aviation related, physics-based problems. Focused on the general aviation aircraft, both single-engine and multi-engine, the problems expose the student to application of physics in aviation. The problems span a range of difficulties from simple trigonometry and simple unit conversion problems to more complicated thermodynamic and forces on an airplane problem. The problems come from the aviation world, including examples from aircraft instrument approaches, aircraft turbocharger operations, aircraft drag force in various flying configurations, and asymmetrical thrust in multi-engine airplanes. These problems are targeted to the student in a first year, algebra-based physics course such as AP® Physics 1 and AP® Physics 2.

Real-world Problems for AP® Physics 1 and AP® Physics 2

Showcased here (1 of 2 posters) are the details of Kirchhoff's two Laws of Electricity presented via spiral teaching in terms of voltage loops which are scaled per charge and current splitting scaled per time as, respectively, applications of the Conservation of Energy and Mass to students in a way that emphasizes these concepts and further buttresses these laws of physics as universal. Possible student misunderstandings and updated useful suggestions for teachers are included. This poster builds on the oral presentation “Spiraling Conservation of Energy/Mass in Introductory Physics: Kirchhoff to Bernoulli” also at this conference.

Exploring Ways to Make a Remote Physics Classroom More Inclusive

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