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We have a large introductory physics course for non-majors, comprised mainly of First Year Undergraduate students. We provide for them a number of multiple choice and formula response questions online to help them prepare for the exams. While we do have other graded components of the course online, this part is set to be ungraded and allows them to see the solutions after a single attempt. We use data collected on the online student responses to explore student study behavior. For example, we were curious to see how students used this online answer checker to help them study for exams - did they try until they got the answer themselves or did they simply put in a junk answer in order to be able to read the solution?

AAPT SM 20

How Students Use Ungraded Exam Review Problems

exam review

ungraded assessments

student behavior

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?

technical paper

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.


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. 

Social Comparison Concern (SCC) is a measurement of how negatively students compare themselves respect to their classmates based on their skill and knowledge of the class. Previous research found that female students, underrepresented minorities, and first generation students reported higher SCC on average, SCC was moderately (negatively) correlated with grade, and SCC mediated the effect of belonging on grade. To further understand SCC, we designed an online intervention by adapting prior motivational intervention designs, and administered a semester-long online SCC pilot intervention study for the first course in the introductory calculus physics sequence at the Ohio State University. Students were divided into SCC treatment or no-treatment control conditions by lecture section. We report on evidence that SCC may be impacting midterm and final exam scores (and vice-versa), especially for lower-scoring students, but the results of our pilot treatment remain inconclusive, and we will discuss our next steps.

The Impact of Grades on Social Comparison Concern

Physics education, especially astronomy education, is an ideal place to explore the intersection of science and religion. Grounded in tenets of peace education, the study of astronomy can be enriched by punctuating learning outcomes of physics concepts with the stories, mythlore, and teachings emanating from religion and culture. The purpose of this approach is to advance the physics we are teaching by resonating with students’ identities and being an entry to the greater conversation about (under)representation in physics, and how the intersection of religion and science provides insight into living and learning in a multi-religious and multicultural world. This session, which centers on the calendar by which cultural and religious observances are determined, advocates for integrating elements of cultural and religious knowledge with astronomy concepts as an inclusive space for all students. This pragmatic approach aligns with andragogical intentions of developing and delivering an increased holistic and inclusive curriculum.

A space oddity: Exploring the intersection of science and religion in physics classrooms.

[This abstract represents one part of a two-part study; some language is reproduced in another abstract.] Our team is studying student ownership of projects, a significant learning outcome in many project-based lab courses. An empirical model of ownership will support educators and researchers in the practice, design, and implementation of courses that encourage student ownership. Our preliminary model was based on analysis of a subset of survey and interview data from five Western and Midwestern physics departments. In this talk, I will demonstrate how this ownership model maps onto our full dataset, including stimulated recall interviews, and what educational implications emerge from further analysis. In prior work, we described ownership as a relationship between students and their projects. Material, cognitive, and affective student-project interactions composed the resulting ownership model. These interactions included student contributions to their projects, student understanding of project topics, and student emotional responses to progress and setbacks.

Student Ownership of Physics Projects: Manifestation in Student-Project Interactions

[This abstract represents one part of a two-part study; some language is reproduced in another abstract.] Our team is studying student ownership of projects, a significant learning outcome in many project-based lab courses. An empirical model of ownership will support educators and researchers in the practice, design, and implementation of courses that encourage student ownership. Our preliminary model was based on analysis of a subset of survey and interview data from five Western and Midwestern physics departments. In this talk, I will demonstrate how this ownership model maps onto our full dataset, including stimulated recall interviews, and what educational implications emerge from further analysis. In our model, ownership is more than an outcome that develops over time and is achieved by the project’s end. Students may or may not experience ownership in any of three phases: choice of topic, execution of methods, and synthesis of results into reports or presentations.

Student Ownership of Lab Projects: Methods and Coding Development

Head-fake learning (“HFL”) is a form of teaching material wherein the students do not realize the form or complexity of what they are learning. This occurs primarily when the mechanism through which the material is taught makes the students think they are learning something entirely different, i.e. how to succeed in Minute to Win It style mini-games instead of learning projectile motion. We discuss how we utilized HFL to present introductory physics and mathematical principles in a newly designed course at UNC entitled Game Show Theory, which uses game show structure and optimal play as a driving motivator. In addition, we will present examples of student work and testimonials regarding how they interacted with the course (and it’s HFL methodology) and will discuss small-scale game show demonstrations which teach physics concepts with minimal cost.

Presenting Physics Concepts via Head-Fake Learning

Of all subjects, quantum mechanics is arguably the one that can benefit the most from integration of computation into the curriculum. Unlike classical mechanics or electromagnetism, quantum mechanics has only few time-independent problems, countable with one hand, that are analytically solvable. There are virtually no time-dependent problems with analytic solutions. This poses a clear challenge to helping students in introductory quantum mechanics in understanding the concepts and developing intuition or insights. Even for the straightforward analysis of two states in a superposition, the bedrock of quantum mechanics, it is hardly possible to follow the time evolution without the use of computation. In this presentation we discuss the integration of computation in an otherwise traditional undergraduate quantum mechanics course to deal with the challenge. Activities (see http://www.faculty.umassd.edu/j.wang/) include simple visualization of superposition, quantum revival, determination of eigenstates, wave packet motion, and screened hydrogen atoms.

Insights from computation in quantum mechanics

I have created a new inventory of innovative online introductory physics problems based on the findings of state-of-the-art research in physics pedagogy and my deep awareness of students’ needs. This inventory currently contains more than 250 items selected from the OpenStax College Physics Textbook and my own collection of 15 years of exams in the College Physics 1 course. These problems are implemented on the Varafy Online platform, and are readily integrated into Canvas (or other Learning Management Systems). They can be easily tailored to each individual instructor’s teaching style. This inventory is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License and is available at no cost to instructors.

An OER Inventory of Innovative Online Physics Problems

In the Chinese high school physics curriculum, the Ampere's rule, the left-hand rule, and the right-hand rule are used to determine the direction of the magnetic field, the ampere and Lorentz force, and the direction of the electric current. However, without a deep understanding of the basis of these rules, which arises from the concept of cross-product, it is easy for students to confuse these rules. This leads to inefficiency and difficulty in problem-solving, which is also the difficulty faced by most teachers. The central idea of these three rules is the cross product; therefore, by guiding students to establish the concept of cross product can cultivate deep learning of electromagnetism knowledge. In this presentation, a conceptual framework of the hand rules will be instructed along with an assessment tool that evaluates students’ understanding of the mastery of the three rules at different phases of their learning.

Assessment of student learning of the hand rules in electromagnetism

We’re developing a web-based utility to give instructors next morning formative reports on last night’s assignments, including the time and difficulty on questions and videos/readings to guide today’s instruction. Together with additional metadata, this information can guide revising the course for rerunning next year. Data are presented using color codes for quickly assessing how well students are doing on individual resources and on the entire assignment. This quickly identifies resources to eliminate or move elsewhere. We use “edx2bigquery” to convert edX log data into Google BigQuery which generates the dynamic reports. It also provides an easy way of adding static metadata via a popup in a modified version of open edX or directly into the resource database. These uses illustrate the desirability of “closing the loop” in education, a powerful way to improve instruction and content. The audience can suggest what information they desire - or to mohamedr@mit.edu

Report and Rerun: Closing the Loops in Physics Education

An essential element of STEM education of the 21st century is the development of scientific thinking, reasoning, and decision-making abilities. In the current literature, there exist multiple schools of thought on various aspects of scientific thinking and reasoning; however, the research community has yet to reach a consensus on the definition, theoretical foundation, and assessment scales of scientific reasoning. This presentation will introduce a comprehensive modeling framework as well as a new assessment instrument on scientific reasoning, which are developed with an emphasis on the process of theory-evidence coordination (TEC). Future work and possible collaborations will also be discussed.

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How Students Use Ungraded Exam Review Problems

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