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This presentation will describe the desirable characteristics of HTML5 astronomy simulations targeted at smartphones and show several examples illustrating these characteristics. We will summarize current thinking regarding “best practices” for smartphone simulation usage in the classroom, covering what we have learned from our experiences and detailing a wish list of what we hope to learn in the future. Publicly available simulations will be described as well as possible avenues for building upon the classroom experience with student simulation work outside of the classroom.

AAPT SM 22

Teaching with Astronomy Smartphone Simulations

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Bridgewater State University has successfully been using a resubmission process for formative assessment quizzes and summative assessment tests in certain lecture sections of our algebra based physics course. Each section contains 32 students and there are no teaching assistants or recitation sections. Students can earn points back on formative assessment quizzes through the use of a ‘points recovery application’. Students can earn points back on summative assessments tests through a process that involves correcting the original test problem, teaching the material to the instructor or a Peer Learning Assistant, and then taking a new test under original testing conditions to replace the original grade. Through this process, students report increased satisfaction with the course, increased learning, and enhanced well-being.

Resubmission Processes in University Lecture Classrooms

As educators, we know that remediation is a fundamental part of the learning process, but how do we actively motivate students to engage in self-reflection and develop epistemic knowledge? During the last few years, I have focused on creating and implementing a remediation-based assessment model in my high school physics classes. This model sets out to eliminate fear of failure and encourage academic risk-taking through rewarding metacognition. Students were given standards-based feedback and the opportunity to participate in a universal reflection-and-retake policy to demonstrate their progress toward achieving targeting learning goals. Through this process, students were prompted to self-reflect and identify root conceptual difficulties, revise work and show evidence of understanding, and then take a reassessment. In this talk we will discuss the model specifics, strategies for implementation and modification for different classroom settings, as well as student outcomes and feedback regarding this learning process.

Modeling A Remediation Policy Focused on Developing Epistemic Knowledge

One expected outcome of physics instruction is that students develop quantitative reasoning skills, including strategies for evaluating solutions to problems. Examples of evaluation strategies include special case analysis, unit analysis, and checking for reasonable numbers. To investigate students’ use of evaluation strategies, we developed and administered tasks prompting students to evaluate symbolic expressions, including the electric field due to three point charges, the velocity of a block at the bottom of an incline with friction, and the final velocities of two masses involved in an elastic collision. Written and interview data were collected at the introductory, sophomore, and junior levels. We classified students’ evaluation strategies into three broad categories: consulting external sources, checking through computation, and comparing to the physical world. We compare our categories to prior work in PER and examine the categories through theoretical lenses of epistemic frames, mathematical modelling, proofs and justifications, and metacognition.

Perspectives on Evaluation Strategies

The use of computation in undergraduate physics education is on the rise, but this implementation faces the challenge of attending to students’ varied degrees of experience with programming. To explore how students approach learning a new programming language, we employ the resources framework, which posits that students approach new learning situations by making use of information or skills (resources) they have already developed. We designed a series of introductory Python tutorials and conducted think-aloud interviews to identify the resources that students activated while completing the tutorials. We present a preliminary analysis of two extreme cases: a student with a rich mathematical background and no programming experience, and a student with a moderate mathematical background and a rich programming experience in multiple programming languages outside of Python. These observations will help inform the further development of these tutorials to explicitly activate helpful resources.

Observations of Student Resources in Introductory Programming Tutorials

With the growing ubiquity of computation in STEM fields, understanding how to teach computational thinking (CT) practices has become an active research area in the last two decades, with particular emphasis on developing CT frameworks. In this paper, we apply one of these CT frameworks and correlate the results with a task analysis to examine how CT practices relate to specific design features of an in-class problem. We have analyzed video data from two separate groups working on one computational class period, which utilizes a minimally working program to model magnetic field vectors. While still in the initial stages of the study, our preliminary results indicate that what is left out of the minimally working program will impact the CT practices students use, particularly around building computational models. Ultimately, we hope this work will help instructors to design activities that can target & build specific CT practices.

Relating Computational Thinking Practices and Problem Design Features

In an ongoing project, we have been using dual-process theories of reasoning to make sense of student difficulties and guide the design of instruction. A focus has been on qualitative tasks in which students give a quick answer, based on an intuitively appealing model, that contradicts physics principles emphasized in their course. We have recently found some success with a HW-based intervention to address a persistent difficulty with air resistance (see Rosen et al., this meeting), and are trying to adapt the intervention to a different content domain. An overarching goal is to identify domain-general curriculum development strategies based on dual process theories. Our target domain involves the balancing of extended objects – and the documented belief that the center of mass divides an object into two pieces of equal mass. In this talk, we describe the intervention strategy, as implemented in the balancing context, and share assessment data.

Adapting a dual-process informed intervention strategy across content domains

Collaborative learning can lead to students learning from each other and solving a physics problem correctly not only in situations in which one student knows how to solve the problem, but also when none of the students can solve the problem alone. In the latter situation, students are co-constructing knowledge that helps them solve the problem. In this study, we investigate student learning and frequency of co-construction in quantum mechanics when students work with peers during class but do not receive any feedback from the course instructor. We thank the National Science Foundation for support.

How often can students co-construct knowledge in quantum mechanics?

In the fall of 2021, the Marquette University Honors Engineering Physics Class worked together with the Wandering Sword Project to measure the center of mass and moment of inertia for a variety of straight and curved swords. and pole-weapons. Results were compared to student work from previous semesters where the same methods were used to analyze other sporting equipment such as golf-clubs, baseball bats, and hurly sticks.

Swords for Science

A ball placed inside a hollow cylinder and spun around an axis perpendicular to the cylinder wall will roll back and forth along the cylinder wall, as expected, but it will also oscillate along the axial direction of the cylinder. These axial oscillations occur in horizontal, tilted, and even vertical cylinders. Here the connections of this system to the sports of bowling (gutterballs), golf (lip outs), and basketball (swirlies) are presented, along with ideas for video analysis experiments for undergraduate level physics labs.

Gutterballs, Lip Outs, and Swirlies

Un-grading is a method used in education that focuses on formative feedback. For example, many Un-graded courses have students set learning goals at the beginning and check in with the professor throughout. At the end of the course students are assigned a grade based on their learning goals. At our institution there are ongoing efforts to implement Un-grading in STEM courses, including introductory physics. Here, I present preliminary findings from qualitative research on these efforts. Students and instructors from three different courses utilizing this method were interviewed and the transcripts analyzed to identify benefits and drawbacks of Un-grading. The results of this study suggest Un-grading has a variety of benefits over traditional grading scales. For example, students felt Un-grading allowed them to learn in a style and pace that worked for them. The study also suggests ways to improve its effectiveness.

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Teaching with Astronomy Smartphone Simulations

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