United States

Recent work by Kanim and Cid [2] suggests that the data used in PER is not representative of students enrolled in physics courses at the national level. Using university-level demographics, Kanim and Cid showed that PER studies oversample from white, wealthy, mathematically-prepared populations of students. What we do not yet know is whether these university-level demographics are representative of introductory physics courses, which are a primary site of research in PER. In this talk, we present data from nine US institutions, comparing the composition of introductory physics classes to aggregate university demographics across a number of social markers, including gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic status. Our aim is to make progress in characterizing the demographics of introductory physics courses, which is imperative to deepening our understanding of how social disparity is manifested in physics classrooms and the institutions that host them. We discuss limitations of our approach, including problematizing our use of statistics to make sense of who is enrolling in introductory physics.

AAPT SM 20

Toward Characterizing the Demographics of Introductory Physics Courses

educational neuroscience

modeling instruction

pedagogy

fmri

brain networks

active learning

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. 

technical paper

Instructors who teach introductory physics courses may be working with the assumption that their students are fluent with middle-school- and high-school-level mathematics. As reasonable as this assumption may seem, our data, which includes over 5,000 hand-written mathematics diagnostics administered at three large state universities, has consistently shown that students struggle with basic mathematics (graphing, trigonometry, geometry, and algebra) to a significant degree. From our large and campus-diverse samples, we have found remarkable consistency between populations and have noticed interesting trends. For example, we have found specific items that seem to predict overall diagnostic performance with impressive accuracy, independent of campus and course. Here, we focus on an in-depth analysis of these predictive items while elaborating on our interpretation of the results. We will also briefly discuss our plans and ideas to address this deep-rooted issue.

Measuring and predicting the mathematical preparedness of introductory physics students

Micropattern gas detectors (MPGDs), of which gas electron multipliers (GEMs) are a class, are a recent technology meeting today’s higher requirements of both spatial and temporal resolution in high energy physics, as well as medical applications. GEM chamber performance depends on many different parameters such as gain, gas tightness, high voltage (HV) response and noise. The gain is a key parameter, a measure of the chamber’s ability to amplify an electronic signal from ionizing particles passing through the chamber’s gas volume. Students in the RWTH Aachen University advanced physics lab studied the effect on gain while varying gas mixture and HV, as well the incoming particle rate. This experiment allows the instructor to cater to diverse set of applications and student interest. Student feedback will be presented.

Micropattern Gas Detectors for Advanced Physics Laboratories

As a high school teacher and E-mentor I have found a wealth of information within the AAPT organization to not only assist with my own instruction but to provide support for new teachers in the field. Everything from adopt a physicist to digi-kits is at my finger tips. As a physics teaching association I believe many members do not realize the breadth of resources available and much of the resources are underused.

Benefits of AAPT to High School Physics Teachers

I will present an overview of some of the cloud-based tools and software to facilitate integration of computation into a physics curriculum. These tools allow students to do computational work without having to install and configure software on their personal computers. The ability to share their code in real-time with classmates allows for collaborative learning, and sharing with the instructor provides an avenue for fast feedback. Examples of assignments using cloud-based tools will be presented.

Cloud-based Tools and Software for Integrating Computation into a Physics Curriculum

Proficiency in units/dimensional analysis is a useful skill in the sciences and engineering, and STEM instructors often presume competence from their students in this area. However, unit analysis techniques and unit systems are not always formally taught, and even with explicit emphasis during instruction, many students lack the repeated exposure necessary to master them. To assess student understanding of units and unit systems, we administered a brief, itemized survey to N=53 calculus-based introductory university physics students. The survey was intended to uncover possible misconceptions and identify previously unknown obstacles to student success within this topic. Our results suggest that as many as half of surveyed participants may not recognize the adaptability of symbolic physical equations to different unit systems. Furthermore, a similar proportion failed to eliminate non-viable answer choices involving analytic functions with units inside their arguments. Consequently, we believe units/dimensional analysis is a topic ripe for further investigation.

Excerpts from an exploratory survey of units/dimensional analysis in introductory physics

Model Rocket engines have provided students at St. Catherine University the opportunity to review concepts about impulse, energy and kinematics. In what is now fondly called ‘the rocket lab’ students build a rocket at the end of one lab session and then proceed to launch and calculate the altitude the model reaches theoretically using impulse and conservation of energy. Students are then able to experimentally measure the altitude using trigonometry and from an altitude box attached to the nose cone. The lab allows for discussion related to sizing i.e. ½ A vs A in terms of the impulse delivered by the engine. We are also able to talk about how the changing mass generates the thrust needed to propel the rocket skywards. Our students have found this lab to be an effective way to learn these topics in their courses.

Model Rocket Engines

Interpretation of student behavior in online learning platforms based on clickstream data is complicated by not being able to directly observe the learner. This leads to difficulties in understanding inherently unobservable effects on the students’ clickstream data. For example, we try to calculate the amount of time that each student spent studying the instructional material in each module, which requires estimating certain properties of the resulting data. Consequently, the major issue we address in this work is the difficulty of making reasonable cutoffs for abnormally short and abnormally long events. Students enrolled in introductory mechanics courses participated in a study where they completed online homework modules in a controlled, observed environment. In this talk, we will present comparisons between students’ clickstream data for those who were observed and those who were not observed, and for the same student in proctored and non-proctored sessions on different modules.

Direct observation of student behavior in online learning modules

Faculty in the Loyola University Chicago (LUC) Physics Department initiated the “Freshman Project” in 1996. This project has continued each year until today, becoming a separate one-credit course that is a graduation requirement for majors in the department. Students, generally in their first year in the major, work in small groups with a faculty mentor, carrying out a semester-long investigation designed to model many aspects of the research experience. Students propose an investigation, design and carry out an experiment, conduct theoretical analysis, and present their results at a department symposium. I will discuss the important role this program has played in the growth and development of the Physics Department at LUC, as well as the benefits of engaging students in this activity early in their undergraduate careers.

A First-Year Research Experience for Physics Majors

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) define a set of Science and Engineering Practices, which map well to the focus areas of the "AAPT Recommendations on the Undergraduate Laboratory Curriculum." Both of these promote development of skills and competencies critical for the research environment and employment in a range of job sectors, and, together, they provide a way to bridge scientific and engineering practices from K-16. This talk will give an overview of and mapping between the NGSS and AAPT Lab Recommendations and will discuss how skill development can be scaffolded from the NGSS high school curriculum through the undergraduate curriculum.

Bridging Skill Development from NGSS to the AAPT Laboratory Recommendations

It is a given that not everyone who starts their Ph.D. in physics will complete it. That being said, there are people who have the great potential of being competent and able researchers that leave without the Ph.D. Using techniques from the Georgia Tech Center for Deliberate Innovation, based in developmental psychology and behavioral economics, we are working to see more clearly what might be getting in the way of competent, motivated students who fail to complete their Ph.D.

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Toward Characterizing the Demographics of Introductory Physics Courses

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