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The Michigan State University Department of Physics and Astronomy had the honor of receiving the Improving Undergraduate Physics Education Award this past December. This talk will discuss our efforts and challenges in improving the educational experience for undergraduates, including faculty buy-in, science practices in introductory courses for engineering majors and life science majors, and the integration of computation across the physics curriculum.

AAPT SM 22

Undergraduate Physics Transformations at Michigan State University

Join us in exploring emergent themes in PER as a scholarly endeavor and as a research community!  Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?
Following the lead of AAPT for the summer meeting, PERC 20/20 was virtual. Enjoy browsing the content.

PERC SM 20

Since its inception, PER has served as a confluence of discipline, theory, research methodology, practice, and application.  How have these facets and the interplays among them been fruitful for physics education globally, regionally, locally, or otherwise?  And, how have our successes and interactions influenced the very nature of PER itself?

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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.



Social media is an amalgamation of memes, brunch pictures, personal updates, dance trends—and science? As a communication tool, social media allows scientists to reach audiences where they already are. Seeing scientists in their feed can break stereotypes, introduce new ideas, or ignite lifelong passions for science. Effective science communication via social media can not only educate but also entertain and inspire.

SciTok, Social Media, and Seeing Science

Social media as we know it now has been around for about 18 years. Because social media platforms make it so easy to broadcast information widely and interact with people having common interests online, vibrant communities of physics instructors have arisen and can be a great way to exchange ideas about all aspects of teaching physics. As a means of broadcasting information and interacting with people online that is nearly two decades old, it would be easy to think that social media is a mature technology by now. I will discuss my observations of using various social media platforms over the span of 14 years and try to speculate about what the next 14 year of social media use might look like.

Your Next Great Teaching Idea Is Just A Tweet Away!

Tik Tok has become one of the most popular and influential social media platforms, its content ranges from simple reaction videos to professionally crafted masterpieces, but it lacks in one area; in science education. With the ability to easily reach out to millions of people, it is difficult to ignore the potential that the social media platform offers to get the public more interested in science. By creating short, entertaining and easy to understand videos on physics concepts, my colleagues and I were able to amass over 330,000 followers on Tik Tok. This resulted in a closer relationship with our students, a larger sense of school pride, and an increase interest from the general public to attend our university. Planning, recording, and editing these videos are no easy tasks as one also needs a decent understanding of how Tik Tok's algorithm functions, but it is worth the extra effort.

Physics and Social media: Everyone's Tok'ing About It

Why do physics graduate students leave their programs? Previous studies report that nearly 40% of physics graduate students do not complete their Ph.D. programs. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 54 graduate students from 23 institutions and asked why physics and astronomy graduate students discontinue their graduate studies. Graduate students cited a variety of cultural and systemic issues that negatively impacted their sense of belonging in the physics community, such as citing unhealthy expectations and hostile environments. In addition, personal non-academic (e.g., health-related) reasons were also frequently mentioned. Finally, a lack of available support structures contributed to students’ discontinuing their graduate studies. Understanding the mechanisms behind student departure is the first step in making positive changes to increase retention for all students in physics.

Why Graduate Students Leave: Exploring Student Perspectives and Experiences

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework that supports instructors in designing inclusive learning environments that anticipate and plan for variations in students’ needs, abilities, and interests. UDL-aligned instructional design may reduce the need for accommodations for some students with disabilities. In this study, we explore postsecondary physics instructors’ approaches to adapting their teaching and learning environment while engaged in a year-long UDL learning community. Revealed causal mapping (RCM) is an analytic technique that uncovers experts’ mental maps about their subject domain. We employ RCM to value instructors’ knowledge and experiences and identify motivations and goals of the learning community members as they select, implement, and reflect on UDL-aligned modifications to their instruction.

Causal mapping analysis of Universal Design for Learning-aligned instructional changes

Previous literature shows that active learning (e.g., group work) supports student learning better when compared with traditional courses. However, many instructors are not trained to foster effective and inclusive group work. To support faculty implementing group work, we created a guide by reviewing literature in three topical domains: cognitive science, research-based instructional strategies, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. We then compiled 29 recommendations for practice aggregated into 6 categories: 1) creating group work activities; 2) creating groups of students; 3) first day framing; 4) supporting students to engage in group work; 5) classroom culture, norms, and practices; and 6) grading group work. We interviewed studio physics instructors to investigate the face validity of the guide. In this talk, we will present the development process of the guide, recommendations from the group work guide, and examples of how the recommendations can be implemented in high school or postsecondary courses.

Fostering Group Work in Studio Physics: Developing an Instructor Guide

Understanding experimental measurement uncertainty is a key learning goal of undergraduate physics laboratory instruction. Most prior research on student thinking about experimental uncertainty has focused on the introductory level, where uncertainty is treated as equivalent to experimental error. Intermediate- and upper-level quantum mechanics courses, however, can further complexify student understanding by introducing a different meaning for measurement uncertainty as an inherent part of the theory of quantum mechanics. We developed a survey to probe students’ thinking about the sources of uncertainty in four different experimental contexts involving classical and quantum systems. In this talk I will describe the sources of uncertainty that students identified in classical versus quantum contexts and discuss the instructional implications of these results.

“Quantum Weirdness”: Physics Paradigm and Student Thinking About Experimental Uncertainty

Physics in the 21st century will be marked by these 5 characteristics. -Active Engagement -Embedded Science Practices -Continuous, Personalized Feedback -Unrestricted Exploration of Phenomena -Multi-modal (Face-to-face an non-face-to-face) What are the barriers that prevent so many of us physics teachers from achieving these ideals? How can we overcome those barriers?

What does 21st Century Physics Look Like?

When our university imposed strict social distancing restraints in response to the pandemic, I developed a technique to offer introductory physics labs at our two-year access campus, whereby exactly one student per lab team actually came to the lab room and operated the equipment, and the remaining team members joined remotely. All team members worked together in real time using a shared Google Sheet, while simultaneously viewing the apparatus and communicating with one another through Zoom. I assigned POGIL-style roles to foster authentic collaboration and work balance within each team (and checked the Sheet's edit history afterward to be sure). In this talk, I describe the implementation details and technological challenges of this technique; outline its post-pandemic continuation as a student accommodation mechanism; and explore its potential as an alternative to "bootcamp" labs for "mostly-online" lab course delivery.

Blended Lab Teams: From Pandemic "hack" to Online Innovation

We have developed a new learning format to reach students around the world during the pandemic: virtual and interactive learning units. They consist of a unique combination of pre-recorded explanatory videos, interactive elements such as quizzes, screen experiments, and expert interviews. We consider interactive learning units to be very promising for incorporation into remote, blended, and face-to-face teaching and learning of physics. In this contribution, we present an interactive learning unit about Positron-Emission-Tomography created with H5P (cern.ch/petworkshop). PET is one application of particle physics in medical diagnostics, whereby particle detectors are used, for example, to locate a tumor. Empirical studies have shown that medical applications of physics are particularly interesting for students. We highlight the main components of the interactive learning unit about PET and provide ideas how to use the material in your physics lessons.

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