Noah D. Finkelstein

Reducing the Gender Achievement Gap in College Science: A Classroom Study of Values Affirmation

Writing to Close Gaps Some have questioned whether findings in the laboratory obtained under controlled conditions and limited contexts bear any relevance to behavior in real-world environments in which ordinary people cope with real-life challenges. Recent studies have shown a replicable and long-term effect of a brief writing exercise on the academic performance of African-American seventh graders in an inner-city public school. Miyake et al. (p. 1234) extended this approach to show that a similar kind of writing exercise can help to reduce the gender gap observed in the performance of female students in an undergraduate physics class, where performance is measured not only via course grades and exam scores, but also on a standardized test. A writing exercise improves the performance of female physics students. In many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, women are outperformed by men in test scores, jeopardizing their success in science-oriented courses and careers. The current study tested the effectiveness of a psychological intervention, called values affirmation, in reducing the gender achievement gap in a college-level introductory physics class. In this randomized double-blind study, 399 students either wrote about their most important values or not, twice at the beginning of the 15-week course. Values affirmation reduced the male-female performance and learning difference substantially and elevated womens modal grades from the C to B range. Benefits were strongest for women who tended to endorse the stereotype that men do better than women in physics. A brief psychological intervention may be a promising way to address the gender gap in science performance and learning.

PhET: Interactive Simulations for Teaching and Learning Physics

The Physics Education Technology (PhET) project creates useful simulations for teaching and learning physics and makes them freely available from the PhET website (http://phet.colorado.edu). The simulations (sims) are animated, interactive, and game-like environments in which students learn through exploration. In these sims, we emphasize the connections between real-life phenomena and the underlying science, and seek to make the visual and conceptual models of expert physicists accessible to students. We use a research-based approach in our design—incorporating findings from prior research and our own testing to create sims that support student engagement with and understanding of physics concepts.The Physics Education Technology (PhET) project creates useful simulations for teaching and learning physics and makes them freely available from the PhET website (http://phet.colorado.edu). The simulations (sims) are animated, interactive, and game-like environments in which students learn through exploration. In these sims, we emphasize the connections between real-life phenomena and the underlying science, and seek to make the visual and conceptual models of expert physicists accessible to students. We use a research-based approach in our design—incorporating findings from prior research and our own testing to create sims that support student engagement with and understanding of physics concepts.

Correlating Student Beliefs With Student Learning Using The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey

A number of instruments have been designed to probe the variety of attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and epistemological frames taught in our introductory physics courses. Using a newly developed instrument — the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) — we examine the relationship between students’ beliefs about physics and other educational outcomes, such as conceptual learning and student retention. We report results from surveys of over 750 students in a variety of courses, including several courses modified to promote favorable beliefs about physics. We find positive correlations between particular student beliefs and conceptual learning gains, and between student retention and favorable beliefs in select categories. We also note the influence of teaching practices on student beliefs.

Learning Physics in Context : a study of student learning about electricity and magnetism

This paper re‐centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well‐defined notion of context, data from a novel university class in electricity and magnetism are analysed to demonstrate the central and inextricable role of context in student learning. This work sits within a broader effort to create and analyse environments that support student learning in the sciences.

A physics department’s role in preparing physics teachers: The Colorado learning assistant model

In response to substantial evidence that many U.S. students are inadequately prepared in science and mathematics, we have developed an effective and adaptable model that improves the education of all students in introductory physics and increases the numbers of talented physics majors becoming certified to teach physics. We report on the Colorado Learning Assistant model and discuss its effectiveness at a large research university. Since its inception in 2003, we have increased the pool of well-qualified K–12 physics teachers by a factor of approximately three, engaged scientists significantly in the recruiting and preparation of future teachers, and improved the introductory physics sequence so that students’ learning gains are typically double the traditional average.

Research‐based Practices For Effective Clicker Use

Adoption of clickers by faculty has spread campus‐wide at the University of Colorado at Boulder from one introductory physics course in 2001 to 19 departments, 80 courses, and over 10,000 students. We study common pedagogical practices among faculty and attitudes and beliefs among student clicker‐users across campus. We report data from online surveys given to both faculty and students in the Spring 2007 semester. Additionally, we report on correlations between student perceptions of clicker use and the ways in which this educational tool is used by faculty. These data suggest practices for effective clicker use that can serve as a guide for faculty who integrate this educational tool into their courses.

Sustaining Educational Reforms in Introductory Physics.

While it is well known which curricular practices can improve student performance on measures of conceptual understanding, the sustaining of these practices and the role of faculty members in implementing these practices are less well understood. We present a study of the hand-off of Tutorials in Introductory Physics from initial adopters to other instructors at the University of Colorado, including traditional faculty not involved in physics education research. The study examines the impact of implementation of Tutorials on student conceptual learning across eight first-semester, and seven second-semester courses, for fifteen faculty over twelve semesters, and includes roughly 4000 students. It is possible to demonstrate consistently high, and statistically indistinguishable, student learning gains for different faculty members; however, such results are not the norm, and appear to rely on a variety of factors. Student performance varies by faculty background - faculty involved in, or informed by physics education research, consistently post higher student learning gains than less-informed faculty. Student performance in these courses also varies by curricula used - all semesters in which the research-based Tutorials and Learning Assistants are used have higher student learning gains than those semesters that rely on non-research based materials and do not employ Learning Assistants.

The Design and Validation of the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey

The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) is a new instrument designed to measure various facets of student attitudes and beliefs about learning physics. This instrument extends previous work by probing additional facets of student attitudes and beliefs. It has been written to be suitably worded for students in a variety of different courses. This paper introduces the CLASS and its design and validation studies, which include analyzing results from over 2400 students, interviews and factor analyses. Methodology used to determine categories and how to analyze the robustness of categories for probing various facets of student learning are also described. This paper serves as the foundation for the results and conclusions from the analysis of our survey data.

The Perceived Value of College Physics Textbooks: Students and Instructors May Not See Eye to Eye

This paper describes a study of student textbook use in four introductory college physics courses. Students were surveyed to find out how much they read their physics textbook, when they read, what effect (if any) this had on their performance, and if different instructors/textbooks made a difference. Survey results indicate that while over 97% of our students buy the required textbook, less than 41% regularly read, 60% read after lecture rather than before, and there is little (or no) correlation between reading habits and course grade. Further analysis of how and why students read indicates little or no variation in the perceived value of the textbook for course components tightly coupled to grades. We found that these results were strikingly similar across conceptual-, algebra-, and calculus-based courses with different instructors and textbooks.

NARROW-LINEWIDTH PASSBAND FILTER FOR ULTRAVIOLET ROTATIONAL RAMAN IMAGING

We present a narrow-passband spectral filter capable of frequency-resolved imaging of rotational Raman light scattering with strong spectral rejection of out-of-band Raman, Rayleigh, and Mie scattering. The filter is based on mercury-vapor absorption, and subsequent resonant fluorescence and has a passband of less than 1 cm(-1). It is paired with an injection-seeded, cavity-locked, frequency-tripled Ti:sapphire laser that produces >30 mJ/pulse of single-mode, tunable light in the vicinity of 253.7 nm. The laser and filter are combined to spectrally resolve scattering from individual rotational Raman lines of nitrogen and oxygen.