Abstract
Physics lab courses are integral parts of an undergraduate physics education, and offer a variety of opportunities for learning. Many of these opportunities center around a common learning goal in introductory physics lab courses: measurement uncertainty. Accordingly, when the stand-alone introductory lab course at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) was recently transformed, measurement uncertainty was the focus of a learning goal of that transformation. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ), a research-based assessment of student understanding around statistical measurement uncertainty, was used to measure the effectiveness of that transformation. Here, we analyze student responses to the PMQ at the beginning and end of the CU course. We also compare such responses from two semesters: one before and one after the transformation. We present evidence that students in both semesters shifted their reasoning in ways aligned with the measurement uncertainty learning goal. Furthermore, we show that more students in the transformed semester shifted in ways aligned with the learning goal, and that those students tended to communicate their reasoning with greater sophistication than students in the original course. These findings provide evidence that even a traditional lab course can support valuable learning, and that transforming such a course to align with well-defined learning goals can result in even more effective learning experiences.4 MoreReceived 14 August 2020Accepted 19 October 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.020160Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasAssessmentInstructional strategiesScientific reasoning & problem solvingProfessional TopicsLower undergraduate studentsPhysics Education Research
Highlights
Lab courses are an important part of physics undergraduate curricula [1,2]
We aim to answer the research question, (Q1) Did students respond to the Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) in ways more aligned with the set paradigm after taking the introductory lab course, compared to when they began the course? In answering (Q1), we consider both the original and transformed course, despite the fact that the original course did not have explicitly stated learning goals, to investigate whether an entirely traditional physics lab course can achieve such a learning outcome
We present quantitative results from applying the PMQ coding scheme developed at Colorado Boulder (CU) to two semesters of the introductory physics lab course at CU: Spring 2017 and Spring 2018
Summary
Lab courses are an important part of physics undergraduate curricula [1,2]. These courses offer opportunities for learning that is critical to becoming a physicist in many different career paths. In the broader context of improving physics lab education, the introductory lab course at the University of Colorado Boulder was recently transformed and studied. The introductory physics lab course at CU is a stand-alone course typically taken by students in their second or third semester of study at CU. For most students, it is the first physics lab course that they take at the college level. It is the first physics lab course that they take at the college level The course, both before and after it was transformed, consists of a series of lab activities involving basic concepts from mechanics, electricity and magnetism, and other topics from introductory physics.
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