United States

This presentation synthesizes several strands of quantitative analysis of the relation of membership in a demographic group underrepresented in physics classes on course outcomes (course grades and Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation post-test scores) as well as university outcomes (graduation). Differences are explored by gender, underrepresented ethnic or racial minority status, status as a first-generation college student, and rural or urban status. Mediation and moderation analysis show that many differences in course outcomes are largely explained by prior preparation (with some important exceptions), but that the factors influencing differences are not the same for all groups. Survival analysis shows that the patterns of risk of negative college outcomes are not the same for all groups suggesting retention efforts need to be tailored for different demographic groups to maximally retain all students.

AAPT SM 22

The Effect of Prior Preparation on Students Underrepresented in Physics

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. The program featured plenary speakers, sessions, workshops and many special activities.

For more information please visit the 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting page at: https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/SM2020/index.cfm.


AAPT SM 20

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. 

technical paper

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. This meeting is an excellent opportunity to share your expertise and learn from and network with leaders in the field.



We present the process and outcomes of introducing a capstone project to the first semester of calculus-based Introductory Physics sequence suitable for both in-class and remote learning. At the end of a semester, students are offered a variety of physics situations to thoroughly investigate and explain by using the knowledge, tools, and techniques that they have gained during the first semester of physics lectures and mastered in laboratories. Topics for the project are curated to provide a possibility of multiple insights by utilizing energy considerations, force-acceleration approach and numerical simulations, and investigated through videos suitable for video analysis. Students are encouraged to work in small groups to boost the peer to peer learning. The project culminates in a poster presentation which provides a summative assessment of the learning gains. The project is introduced as a part of the general course redesign funded by the Affordable Learning Georgia grant.

Using a Capstone Experience in the Introductory Physics Classes

Many undergraduate students find it difficult to visualize 3-D concepts in physics and engineering courses. There is a need for context-specific spatial visualization activities to help students connect 2-D representations to 3-D models. We have assembled an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate physics/computer science research students together with physics and PER faculty to create 3D augmented reality (AR) models of physics concepts for astronomy, kinematics, mechanics, electricity, magnetism and mathematical physics. AR models provide students with an opportunity to convert 2-D representations to 3-D visualizations. Students and instructors can utilize these AR apps in a variety of situations including for use within lectures, problem solving sessions or labs either within in-person or remote instruction.

Augmented Reality Models of Physics Concepts

Acquiring an unnecessary radioactive source inventory is discouraged in the 21st century. A laboratory using radioactive sources present in our environment was developed to observe nuclear decay and transport phenomena. Progeny of radon-220 and radon-222 were collected using electrostatic techniques and observed with both a NaI(Tl) well counter spectrometer and a cloud chamber. The spectrometer recorded six ten-minute spectra, followed by four five-hour spectra, which were used to identify radon progeny based on decay emissions' characteristic energy and radionuclide half-lives. Radon progeny deposited on the end of a wire formed a short-lived, pointlike source of high energy alpha particles for the cloud chamber. Radon-220 itself was introduced into the cloud chamber, so that gas diffusion, linear energy transfer, and radioactive decay chains could be observed and discussed. A video presentation of these experiments was created for remote instruction during the pandemic.

Laboratory Instruction Using Radon and Its Progeny

As computation grows as a tool for scientists and engineers, there has been an increased interest in how to support STEM majors most effectively in the development of computational practices. It is important to support the development of computational practices for undergraduate students within majors like physics and mathematics as they have unique opportunities to operationalize computation in multiple contexts. We analyze the significance of the computational disposition “persistence” for an individual and how that impacts the group members around her. We present a representative case study of an individual who engages her group members through consistent persistence. We seek to propose a potential relationship between persistence and other computational thinking practices. Furthermore, we highlight opportunities for educators to encourage persistence in individuals that in turn serves their group. Through this analysis, we consider how creating collaborative environments in computationally integrated environments proves productive for students’ tackling computational activities.

Nevertheless, She Persisted: The Impact of Persistence in Computational Education

Although the number of women earning physics degrees has increased over time, women remain under-represented in the field, earning 21% of physics bachelor’s degrees, 19% of physics doctorates, and 19% of faculty positions. Women also encounter more challenges in academic departments and physics programs. Using survey data collected by the AIP Statistical Research Center and the Gender Gap in Science project, our results show that compared to men, women in academia were more likely to report fewer resources, less confidence, less satisfying mentor relationships, and a less positive work climate. When we compared women’s experiences before and during the Covid-19 pandemic, we found that women in academia were more likely to struggle with burnout, mental health challenges, work-life balance, and performing research activities. These results can be used to better support women in physics, especially as academic institutions continue to cope with the effects of the pandemic.

Challenges Facing Women in Physics

We present on updates to a unit on diffusion in an Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences (IPLS) course. We will describe the series of computational tasks designed to build up students’ understanding of random motion and diffusion and contrasting it with coherent motion. These tasks are embedded in an integrated lab-lecture (studio style) introductory physics course that meets the needs of life science students. Our design of this course focuses on incorporating computational simulations that model complex biological phenomenon and complement empirical lab investigations. In this presentation we will describe changes that we have made to the diffusion computational unit and how those changes supported student understanding and engagement. We also add in an optional module that introduced students to quantum computers that are used to simulate random walk.

Modeling Diffusion for Life Science Majors by Incorporating Computation

The STEMcoding Project began in 2017 with the launch of a youtube channel featuring coding tutorials on the physics of classic video games. Since then the content has grown and during the pandemic we redesigned nearly all of our activities to give students instant feedback on their codes rather than relying heavily on the instructor to troubleshoot. The pandemic also inspired us to create our own object tracking code that works through the browser on video data so students can perform simple experiments at home and analyze them. Both the object tracker and the instant feedback take advantage of javascript and a library called p5.js. I will also briefly describe coding activities that we designed for 9th grade physical science that also work well in college non-major classes. Many of these activities appear on the PICUP site (compadre.org/PICUP)

Reinventing the STEMcoding Project through the Pandemic

This study explored the effectiveness of integrating computational exercises as an instructional tool in a general education astronomy course over four semesters. Fifteen spreadsheet-based computational exercises were designed and incorporated into a single-semester astronomy course to complement the existing active learning curriculum. Computational exercises were added to improve students’ understanding of concepts, influence connecting concepts with the mathematics, and support the association of science with prediction. As most new curricula only report one or two semesters of results before widespread introduction occurs, the longer-term assessment of these instructional interventions provide a better indication of effectiveness of the new curriculum. Student learning pre to post was measured with the TOAST and LPCI. Additionally, student survey data was collected to investigate student attitudes toward computational exercises and overall perceptions of the course. Assessment revealed TOAST correctness gains of 20%, LPCI correctness gains of 29%, and overall positive attitudes towards the computational activities.

A Long-term Assessment of Computational Activities in an Astronomy Course

In Fall 2019, we reformed all of the introductory physics courses and components at Rutgers, Newark using an ISLE-approach. Each course includes lecture and recitation, what we call “Large Group Meeting” and “Small Group Meeting,” and lab. 450 students enroll in these courses each semester. ISLE is a constructivist approach where students learn physics by doing physics. How do we engage a lecture hall of 150 students in experimentation? What happens in Small Group Meeting? How are labs designed so students learn practices of science? We present the curriculum and structure of our ISLE-based courses to demonstrate what constructivism can look like in large lecture courses.

What Do Large Introductory Physics ISLE-based Courses Look Like?

We reformed our introductory physics courses using ISLE in an effort to teach students to think like scientists. In this approach, students develop physics knowledge by observing phenomena, creating explanations, and testing ideas. Students then apply knowledge to solve problems. Open-ended problems are scored using a rubric with five rows: Sketch, Representation, Problem Solving Procedure, Explanation, and Evaluation. Evaluation requires making sense of physics concepts and one’s own work to determine if an answer or idea is correct. In this presentation we analyze student open-ended submissions to see ways in which they evaluate their work and which methods are most effective, with hopes of better teaching this skill.

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The Effect of Prior Preparation on Students Underrepresented in Physics

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