United States

The Physics and Astronomy Department at San Francisco State University is undertaking a comprehensive reform of our introductory physics laboratory courses, including training graduate teaching assistants, reflective journaling, and a move away from the previously used verification-style labs. As we make these changes, we have been administering a variety of surveys to gain insight into students’ skills, attitudes, self-efficacy, and sense of belonging in the lab environment. The survey used for this study is the Quantitative Reasoning for College Science (QuaRCS) assessment, which measures students’ performance in numerical skills commonly used in STEM (eg. graph reading, table reading, arithmetic, proportional reasoning, estimation, percentages, etc.) as well as their attitudes surrounding quantitative reasoning. Between Fall 2018 - Spring 2021 we collected roughly 5000 QuaRCS responses across the following courses prior to instruction: a three-semester calculus-based physics sequence targeted toward engineering, computer science and physical science majors; a two-semester algebra-based physics sequence targeted toward students in the biosciences; a one-semester conceptual physics course; and a one-semester conceptual astronomy course. Through factor analysis and mediation analysis of these data, we identify factors affecting students’ quantitative skills performance, such as numerical self-efficacy, numerical anxiety, numerical relevancy, school math affect, daily life math affect, and course motivation. Through this analysis, we can better understand the attributes of students at SFSU that contribute to their success. By leveraging these attributes in the introductory labs we hope to better support the diverse population of students in our courses.

PERC SM 21

Factors Affecting Introductory Physics Students’ Quantitative Reasoning Skills and Attitudes at a Large, Hispanic-Serving University

quarcs

factor analysis

survey

**Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics**

As a gateway discipline to STEM majors and careers, physics plays a central role in deciding who does, and who doesn't, get to discover and pursue scientific careers. Technical and scientific professionals are rewarded with economic privilege and status which affords them both social and cultural power. Therefore, social justice will be realized only when the opportunity, and the choice, to excel in physics is open to all students. The culture and practices of the physics classroom reflect the culture of physics at large, which raises the question of how our professional physics communities can embrace, rather than inadvertently repel, a diverse group of academics that can help improve physics culture.  To this end, the 2021 Physics Education Research Conference will focus on defining inclusive spaces and practices. Additionally, we will explore strategies for eliminating exclusionary practices in our classrooms, research spaces, and professional organizations. We call on the community to propose sessions that will drive conversations related to these initiatives throughout PERC 2021.

Please download the full program [here. ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TRMC_SYJ3PUqXyP7sskA7LRSA8ow0eRE/view?usp=sharing)

August 4, 2021 - August 5, 2021 in a Virtual Conference Format

Making Physics More Inclusive and Eliminating Exclusionary Practices in Physics

poster

In spring 2020, among the many significant challenges raised by the COVID-19 pandemic, many educators had to face the most arduous task: to convert well-designed in-person instruction methods to online teaching and to teach synchronously using hybrid or HyFlex models or completely asynchronously. The above teaching methods require instructor-student communication that allows the instructor to adapt his/her teaching material and teaching style to best fit their audience. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, while some students seem to have acclimated to online teaching, many do not seem to be engaging in the virtual classroom. In the worst-case scenario, some students may not be present at all, while others may be present but not participating. With minimal immediate feedback from students, we believe that access to some background information - such as learning styles, goals, motivations, and expectations of the potential audience - will help instructors improve their online teaching methods and increase classroom comprehension. In the process, we collected data from STEM introductory-level courses in the form of student feedback surveys and personal interviews conducted online. We then used persona methodology and ethnography to document the diverse learning group in a STEM classroom. Personas are “life-like models, whose characteristics are driven by the various goals and motivations of real or potential users." We used these personas to learn how individuals’ learning experiences affect their participation, goals, motivations, and expectations during online learning. These personas can support the design of online courses with student and instructor-centered approaches that better engage undergraduate students across multiple disciplines.

Personas of STEM students completing online instructions during the COVID-19 pandemic

State regulations in response to the coronavirus pandemic impact upon the state of Arkansas permitted a full year’s worth of hybrid instruction at the University of Central Arkansas during the 2020-2021 academic year. Changes to instruction included the permission of an in-person lab, subject to social distancing, reduced classroom capacity, and other health protocols. However, these protocols induced the removal of a research-based problem-solving exercise previously available at the beginning of lab sections. Before and during this time, data for the Attitudes and Approaches to Physics Problem Solving (AAPS) survey was collected over the course of five-semesters’ worth of introductory algebra-based physics students: two semesters of normal in-person instruction (Spring 2019, 1st-semester physics, and Fall 2019, 2nd-semester physics); one semester in which normal instruction was interrupted by pandemic emergencies mid-semester, forcing fully online instruction for the remainder (Spring 2020, 1st-semester physics); and two semesters in which a hybrid format for lecture and adjusted in-person laboratory section were permitted (Fall 2020, 2nd-semester physics, and Spring 2021, 1st-semester physics). This permits comparison of first-semester and second-semester students between the pre-pandemic traditional instruction and the pandemic-induced hybrid instruction. Students’ attitudes towards physics problem solving is checked for correlation with the presence or lack thereof of a pre-lab problem solving exercise, in the institutional setting of a regional comprehensive state university in the Southern US. A feedback survey from students who took the hybrid course is also examined for perceived relevance as well as student beliefs as to whether or not the problem solving exercise would have helped if it could have been included in the laboratory sections.

Attitudes toward Physics Problem Solving: In-Person vs. Hybrid Instruction”

The move to online teaching necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic has had profound impacts on university teaching and learning. Learning Assistants (LAs), undergraduates who operate as both instructors and students, were doubly impacted by the transition. In the Spring of 2020, LAs were critical in maintaining a collaborative and inclusive learning environment during the sudden transition to online learning. To examine how LAs were affected by the transition, we conducted an exploratory case study of experienced LAs at [Redacted] University who were teaching in a flipped, introductory-level physics course. We explore the impact on them both as students and instructors. Through an analysis of semi-structured interviews, several common themes emerged. First, the loss of structure in the environment led to increased structure in other aspects of the LAs' life. Further, increased isolation led to a decrease in interaction between the teaching staff inside and outside of the classroom. As a result, LAs have had to develop new classroom management techniques to compensate for the changed environment. At the same time, the resources available to students have changed, often compounding existing challenges faced by the LAs. In this work, we will discuss the strategies developed by two experienced LAs to deal with the challenges of transitioning to an online environment. We hope this will enable further studies focusing on the impact of online teaching on physics identity building in LAs.

Undergraduate learning assistants and the transition to online learning

The sudden transition to remote instruction left many introductory physics students with limited opportunities for meaningful interpersonal interactions with their classmates and instructors. Students reported discouragement over their ability to learn new concepts, and lack of motivation to engage in the courses. In response, we formed “Learning Pods” - online learning communities of small student groups connected through Slack and mentored in collaboration skills. Summer of 2020, Learning Pods became an organizing structure of the remotely delivered introductory calculus-based mechanics course. In subsequent terms, features of the Learning Pod Intervention varied as we scaled up from courses with ~100 students to those with 300-500 students. Based on analysis of student survey questions, we present preliminary indicators of increased student self-efficacy and improved engagement with instructors and peers. Improved self-efficacy and engagement have been correlated with improved success and persistence, especially for students from groups underrepresented in physics. We observe that explicitly incorporating collaboration as instructional material and setting up structures to facilitate communication increased student self-efficacy and interactivity. In addition, TA facilitation of synchronous activities to foster effective collaboration lowered barriers for students reaching out to them. Overall, instructor and TA efforts to increase effective collaboration and communication had a positive impact on student self-efficacy and engagement, and the more structured and explicit interventions had more impact.

Effects of facilitating collaboration in large-enrollment introductory physics courses

The rush to online course delivery in response to COVID-19 revealed limitations of commercially available online virtual labs. Existing virtual lab experiences focus on content delivery and generally poorly support student exploration. As well, the effectiveness of virtual labs is not well understood, particularly for specific student populations including Hispanic/Latinx students. To address these issues, educators in the California State University system designed three virtual labs that focus on high impact scientific and mathematical processes, relate to real life events brought about by the pandemic, and are culturally responsive and trauma-informed. This poster shares initial results from educational research focused on student experiences in the new upper-division physics virtual lab. The primary methodology for this research is user experience (UX) testing, an interview-based method in which users (students) are asked to talk aloud as they complete tasks (virtual course/lab). Led by a student researcher, UX testing was selected to empower students to have a safe space to share their experiences with another peer to gather feedback to improve/continue virtual course/lab structure. UX testing is effective with small numbers of participants; five users is ideal for discovering problems in an existing system because the probability of users encountering a usability issue is 31% according to an average problem frequency and can find 85% of the problems (Sauro 2012). In this study, three of five students interviewed identify as Hispanic/Latinx. UX testing showed a 100% success rate and provided insights connected to course/lab resources, organization, and future approaches to virtual labs. Findings from pre/post surveys on student self-efficacy (Chen, Gully & Eden 2001) and sense of belonging (Floyd-Smith, et al, 2010) are also shared. Student reflections on the method of UX testing show that the research method, itself, contributes to student sense of belonging.

Reimagined Virtual Upper-Division Physics Laboratory Experiences in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Findings from User Experience Testing

Attending to students' motivation to adopt computation as a physics practice is essential in effectively integrating computation into physics education. Within the Communities of Practice (COP) framework, addressing this motivational need involves inducting students into the community's sense of joint enterprise, which includes physicists' motivating reasons for adopting computational practices. We used the COP framework to interview students and instructors in the semester after they completed a set of computationally integrated upper division physics courses. This timing allowed us to assess students' perceptions of computation after they were no longer required to engage in computation in their coursework. This article discusses the reasons for using computation in physics identified by these students and instructors. We find that the students saw computation as a normative physics practice, and that they identified reasons for using computation that are consistent with those held by their instructors and the broader physics community. However, we also observe differences in the ways that these instructors and students articulated these reasons: The instructors drew on their research experience with computation, while the students drew on experience from coursework; each student tended to focus their overall discussion on a smaller subset of reasons than the instructors did; and students tended to discuss reasons in isolation, while instructors tended to interweave multiple reasons. We interpret these differences based on the students' positions and trajectories within the physics community.

Comparison of student and instructor reasons for using computation

We examined the prevalence of rapid answer copying among university students completing online homework for an introductory level calculus-based physics course taught remotely during the COVID pandemic. We first compared the attempt duration distribution of 26 problems, between 42 students who self-reported as having completed the homework by themselves against the rest of the class. Significant differences were detected for 3 out of 26 problems. We then identified abnormally short problem attempts indicative of potential rapid answer copying, by fitting the attempt duration distribution of each problem with finite-mixture models, using mixtures of either normal or skewed distributions. We detected a significantly smaller fraction of short attempts from self-reporting students on only 3 out of 26 problems and found no statistically significant difference in percentage correct of short attempts between the populations. In conclusion, our analysis did not find evidence indicating wide-spread rapid answer copying among students. We also explored differences in learning behavior between the two populations by applying process mining to the event logs of one of the homework learning modules, which reveals that some students may have copied answers after spending longer time or using multiple attempts on a given problem. However, this form of answer copying is also unlikely to be prevalent since the percentage correct on normal attempts are also similar between the two populations on most problems.

Measuring the level of homework answer copying during COVID-19 induced remote instruction

Students watching asynchronous online lectures often struggle with active attention, may be overwhelmed by complex information, and may inaccurately judge the depth of their own learning. Learning prompts are possible solution to these issues, however, some research suggests prompts may be more effective for some students than others. The goals of this study were to (a) test the effectiveness of different types of prompts in online physics learning and (b) determine whether individual differences moderate the effectiveness of prompts. Students (N=253) enrolled in physics courses over three semesters watched a video lecture on the concept of simple harmonic motion. During the lecture, students were shown a) cognitive prompts, intended to facilitate elaboration and organization strategies, b) metacognitive prompts meant to facilitate self-monitoring and regulation, or c) no prompts. Students were asked to type a response to each prompt before continuing the lecture. Afterwards, students completed a quiz on simple harmonic motion. Students enrolled during our third semester of data collection (n=102) also responded to survey items meant to assess differences in studying approach and metacognitive awareness. Students who received cognitive prompts performed significantly better than students who received no prompts. Furthermore, students who reported having more disorganized study approaches performed better than similarly disorganized students in other conditions. There was no effect of condition for students who scored lower on disorganization. Students who received metacognitive prompts did not score significantly higher than students in other conditions. These findings suggest embedding prompts to promote elaboration and organization strategies may improve learning. This intervention may be most beneficial for less organized students.

Students with Disorganized Study Habits Benefit from Cognitive Prompts During Online Video Lectures

About 40% of first-time college enrollees begin their path at a two-year college (TYC), with 80% intending to ultimately earn a bachelor’s degree (Shapiro, 2013). Our research team worked with faculty at a TYC working in a cohort program to support STEM students intending to transfer to earn a bachelor’s degree. A required component for the cohort students is a project-based STEM Research Methods course, offered to students in their first year at the TYC. In this presentation, we share the results from emergent coding of a collection of weekly journal entries that are informed by a set of observations, field notes, and interviews. We share the themes from this research that provide guidelines for how TYC teachers can facilitate research experiences for students early in their college careers. We present an analysis of these themes using a framework of learning “gains” in CUREs initially proposed by (Lopatto, 2004).

Characterizing Learning Gains in a Two-Year College Embedded Research Course

Intelligence mindset has been studied extensively in education research, but domain-specific intelligence mindset research is relatively new in the physics context. Additionally, recent mindset research has uncovered separable factors within the intelligence mindset construct. In this study, we test a model involving four factors (My Ability, My Growth, Others' Ability, and Others' Growth) to pre and post survey data from Physics 1 classes. In particular, we explore how these mindset factors change over time as well as their ability to predict course grade. We find that students are less likely to endorse a growth mindset for themselves and others at the end of their first calculus-based introductory physics course than at the beginning. We also find that decrease in mindset measures are more drastic for female students than male students. Finally, we find that the best predictor of course grades is the My Ability component of the mindset construct, which has implications both for creating equitable and inclusive learning environment and determining how educators implement mindset interventions.

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Personas of STEM students completing online instructions during the COVID-19 pandemic

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