Physics

Historically, the implementation of research-based assessments (RBAs) has been a driver of educational change within physics and helped motivate adoption of interactive engagement pedagogies. Until recently, RBAs were given to students exclusively on paper and in-class; however, this approach has important drawbacks including decentralized data collection and the need to sacrifice class time. Recently, some RBAs have been moved to online platforms to address these limitations. Yet, online RBAs present new concerns such as student participation rates, test security, and students' use of outside resources. Here, we report on a study addressing these concerns in both upper-division and lower-division undergraduate physics courses. We gave RBAs to courses at five institutions; the RBAs were hosted online and featured embedded JavaScript code which collected information on students' behaviors (e.g., copying text, printing). With these data, we examine the prevalence of these behaviors, and their correlation with students' scores, to determine if online and paper-based RBAs are comparable. We find that browser loss of focus is the most common online behavior while copying and printing events were rarer. We found that correlations between these behaviors and student performance varied significantly between introductory and upper-division student populations, particularly with respect to the impact of students copying text in order to utilize internet resources. However, while the majority of students engaged in one or more of the targeted online behaviors, we found that, for our sample, none of these behaviors resulted in a significant change in the population's average performance that would threaten our ability to interpret this performance or compare it to paper-based implementations of the RBA.

Several prior studies in introductory physics have found a gender gap on conceptual assessments such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) with male students performing better than female students. Moreover, prior studies in the context of mathematics have also found that activation of a negative stereotype about a group can lead to deteriorated performance of the stereotyped group. Here, we describe two studies in which we investigated the impact of interventions on the gender gap on the FCI and CSEM in large introductory physics courses at a large research university. In the first study, we investigated whether asking introductory physics students to indicate their gender immediately before taking the CSEM increased the gender gap compared to students who were not asked for this information. We found no difference in performance between male and female students in the two conditions. In the second study, conducted with several thousand introductory physics students, we investigated the prevalence of the belief that men generally perform better in physics than women and the extent to which this belief is correlated with the performance of both female and male students on the FCI and the CSEM in introductory physics courses. We found that at the end of the year-long calculus-based introductory physics sequence, in which female students are significantly underrepresented, agreeing with a gender stereotype was correlated negatively with the performance of female students on the conceptual physics surveys. The fact that female students who agreed with the gender stereotype performed worse than female students who disagreed with it at the end of the year-long calculus-based physics course may partly be due to an increased stereotype threat that female students who agree with the stereotype may experience in this course.

La Serena School for Data Science is a multidisciplinary program with six editions so far and a constant format: during 10-14 days, a group of ??30 students (15 from the US, 15 from Chile and 1-3 from Caribbean countries) and ??9 faculty gather in La Serena (Chile) to complete an intensive program in Data Science with emphasis in applications to astronomy and bio-sciences. The students attend theoretical and hands-on sessions, and, since early on, they work in multidisciplinary groups with their "mentors" (from the faculty) on real data science problems. The SOC and LOC of the school have developed student selection guidelines to maximize diversity. The program is very successful as proven by the high over-subscription rate (factor 5-8) and the plethora of positive testimony, not only from alumni, but also from current and former faculty that keep in contact with them.

A set of virtual experiments were designed to use with introductory physics I (analytical and general) class, which covers kinematics, Newton laws, energy, momentum, and rotational dynamics. Virtual experiments were based on video analysis and simulations. Only open educational resources (OER) were used for experiments. Virtual experiments were designed to simulate in-person physical laboratory experiments. All the calculations and data analysis (analytical and graphical) were done with Microsoft excel. Formatted excel tables were given to students and step by step calculations with excel were done during the class. Specific emphasis was given to student learning outcomes such as understand, apply, analyze and evaluate. Student learning outcomes were studied with detailed lab reports per each experiment and end of the semester written exam (which based on experiments). Lab class was fully web-enhanced and managed by using a Learning management system (LMS). Every lab class was recorded and added to the LMS. Virtual labs were done by using live video conference technology and labs were tested with the both synchronous and asynchronous type of remote teaching methods.

This work analyzes the difficulties in learning and teaching Einstein's theory of special relativity. An extensive bibliographic review has been performed, considering articles published in the most relevant journals on science education, which were selected taking into account the following impact factors: JCR, SJR, IN-RECS and ICDS. The typical thinking of students and teachers is discussed pointing out that, occasionally, it does not befit the proper scientific perspective. Different educational proposals are examined and particular didactic implications are inferred. The conclusions of this inquiry constitute the basis of a proposal that relies on a Minkowskian geometrical formulation for teaching special relativity in upper secondary education.

In a previous study, students' self-expressed learning orientations towards an exercise centered on self-monitoring one's ability to solve a pre-lab physics problem were identified from a post-test feedback survey given to an introductory algebra-based physics student population spanning six measured semesters, and examined as a potential variable in course performance, force and motion conceptual understanding, and attitudes towards learning physics. The sampled population, which primarily consists of life science majors, was also asked in the same feedback survey to discuss what portion or portions of the course were relevant to their respective choices of major. In this study, we examine the fact that about 50 students out of 218 sampled students, or 23% of the sample population, explicitly stated that they perceived no relevance at all of the course to their respective majors, whereas the other 168 students cited portions of the course or the entirety of the course as being relevant to their majors. A follow-up investigation of perceived relevance versus irrelevance shows that attitudes towards physics will experience more expert-like shifts for students who perceive relevance than students who do not; in particular, the attitudinal survey's item clusters that pertain to personal interest and real-world connections appear to show the strongest effect. Further examination showed that biology majors and health science majors (two distinctive sub-populations of life science majors) show similar pre-post trends for relevance vs. irrelevance perceptions, whereas students with a performance achievement goal appeared to bifurcate between a novice-like shift for perceived irrelevance and no attitudinal shift from pre to post for perceived relevance. Discussion includes emphasis on limitations imposed by institution type among other factors.

We report on the initial phase of an ongoing, multi-stage investigation of how to incorporate Virtual Reality (VR) technology in teaching introductory astronomy concepts. Our goal was to compare the efficacy of VR vs. conventional teaching methods using one specific topic, Moon phases and eclipses. After teaching this topic to an ASTRO 101 lecture class, students were placed into three groups to experience one of three additional activities: supplemental lecture, "hands-on" activity, or VR experience. All students were tested before and after their learning activity. Although preliminary, our results can serve as a useful guide to expanding the role of VR in the astronomy classroom.

We present an engaging levitation experiment that students can perform at home or in a simple laboratory using everyday objects. A cork, modified to be slightly denser than water, is placed in a jug containing tap water and coarse kitchen salt delivered at the bottom without stirring. The salt gradually diffuses and determines a stable density stratification of water, the bottom layers being denser than the top ones. During the dissolution of salt, the cork slowly rises at an increasing height, where at any instant its density is balanced by that of the surrounding water. If the cork is gently pushed off its temporary equilibrium position, it experiences a restoring force and starts to oscillate. Students can perform many different measurements of the phenomena involved and tackle non-trivial physical issues related to the behaviour of a macroscopic body immersed in a stratified fluid. Despite its simplicity, this experiment allows to introduce various theoretical concepts of relevance for the physics of the atmosphere and stars and offers students the opportunity of getting acquainted with a simple system that can serve as a model to understand complex phenomena such as oscillations at the Brunt-Väisälä frequency and the propagation of internal gravity waves in a stratified medium.

Reform movements in science education, such as inquiry-based instruction, have been heavily influenced by constructivist learning theories (National Research Council, 2000). These learning theories place the learner as the sole constructor of knowledge and emphasize the importance of the learner's inquiry process (Yilmaz, 2008). In constructivist inquiry-based science education, lab experiences frequently play an important role in instruction as they provide students with opportunities to observe and make sense of the world around them (National Research Council, 2000), which raises the question of how inquiry-based science instruction can be translated to online environments. There are several models for lab experiences in online science courses, including hands-on labs where students directly manipulate materials, remote labs where students manipulate materials through a computer, and virtual labs and simulations where students work with simulated materials (Powell, et al., 2010). Hands-on labs play an important role, especially given constructivist views that students construct meaning by making observations of the world around them, but there is evidence that simulated and virtual labs can play an important role and may even be better suited to some instructional goals than hands-on labs. Constructivist instruction also requires students to make their process visible and teachers to be responsive to student thinking, both of which are more challenging in online environments (Crippen, et al., 2013). However, with intentional design, these features can be incorporated into online science courses (Jaber, et al., 2018; Jang, 2009).

We propose a simple experiment to explore magnetic fields created by electric railways and compare them with a simple model and parameters estimated using easily available information. A pedestrian walking on an overpass above train tracks registers the components of the magnetic field with the built-in magnetometer of a smartphone. The experimental results are successfully compared with a model of the magnetic field of the transmission lines and the local Earth's magnetic field. This experiment, suitable for a field trip, involves several abilities, such as modeling the magnetic field of power lines, looking up reliable information and estimating non-easily accessible quantities.