Level Physics Courses Research Articles

Labor-based grading practices in the physics classroom

I describe the assessment framework of labor-based contract grading (LBCG). In a labor-based grading scheme, the time and effort (“labor”) a student spends on an assignment determines the credit they receive; the contract component requires students to design projects with clearly defined goals and deliverables, which must be satisfied to earn credit. LBCG is intended to promote student agency and engagement and to provide a more equitable assessment framework, given that students come with a wide range of prior experiences and preparation. I illustrate the LBCG framework within the context of an upper level physics course, using a particular assignment as an example; I also provide information on student experiences and engagement.

Performance of ChatGPT on the test of understanding graphs in kinematics

The well-known artificial intelligence-based chatbot ChatGPT-4 has become able to process image data as input in October 2023. We investigated its performance on the test of understanding graphs in kinematics to inform the physics education community of the current potential of using ChatGPT in the education process, particularly on tasks that involve graphical interpretation. We found that ChatGPT, on average, performed similarly to students taking a high-school level physics course, but with important differences in the distribution of the correctness of its responses, as well as in terms of the displayed “reasoning” and “visual” abilities. While ChatGPT was very successful at proposing productive strategies for solving the tasks on the test and expressed correct reasoning in most of its responses, it had difficulties correctly “seeing” graphs. We suggest that, based on its performance, caution and a critical approach are needed if one intends to use it in the role of a tutor, a model of a student, or a tool for assisting vision-impaired persons in the context of kinematics graphs. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

A three-year comparative study of dominant misconceptions among first-year physics students at a South African university

This article discusses a three-year study (2020–2022) of dominant misconceptions (DMs) for a large cohort of first-year physics course students at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Our study considered pre-test scores on the force concept inventory using a graphical method, where we found statistical differences between the mean DM scores for the 2020 cohort, as compared to the 2021 and 2022 cohort; possibly due to the onset of COVID lockdowns. We also compared our data from South Africa with cohorts based in Spain and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the method of DMs was also applied. From this comparison, we found some differences in the preconception knowledge of the cohorts. Furthermore, we included an analysis of DMs through the ‘gender lens’ for the South African cohort, finding no statistically significant difference between the means for DM scores of students who identify as male or female. Finally, given the diverse language backgrounds and levels of matriculation preparation foruniversity level physics courses, we have also shown how quickly responding to student misconceptions can be efficiently addressed using the method of DMs.

Reducing procrastination on introductory physics online homework for college students using a planning prompt intervention

We examine the effectiveness of a planning prompt intervention to reduce procrastination on online homework for college students. The intervention asked students to indicate their intention to earn small amounts of extra credit for completing assignments earlier and form a plan to realize their intentions. Students’ learning behavior is measured by five data metrics collected from gradebook and student interaction logs from four sections of the same college level physics course, including three metrics that capture how students space their work on assignments and two that measure the level of student engagement when completing assignments. To separate the impact of extraneous factors from the treatment effect, we employ a “difference in differences” method—initially developed in economics—and construct multilinear models for each of the five metrics. Our models show that by simply asking students to form a plan prior to the assignment, students on average earned 5% more extra credit, completed homework significantly earlier, and spread out their work significantly more. However, the intervention did not significantly change students’ level of engagement with the learning materials, nor did it change students’ work distribution on the next assignment.Received 15 December 2022Accepted 9 February 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.19.010123Published 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 AreasInstructional materials developmentResearch methodologyProfessional TopicsLower undergraduate studentsPhysics Education Research

Tracking Changes in Students’ Online Self-Regulated Learning Behaviors and Achievement Goals Using Trace Clustering and Process Mining

Success in online and blended courses requires engaging in self-regulated learning (SRL), especially for challenging STEM disciplines, such as physics. This involves students planning how they will navigate course assignments and activities, setting goals for completion, monitoring their progress and content understanding, and reflecting on how they completed each assignment. Based on Winne & Hadwin’s COPES model, SRL is a series of events that temporally unfold during learning, impacted by changing internal and external factors, such as goal orientation and content difficulty. Thus, as goal orientation and content difficulty change throughout a course, so might students’ use of SRL processes. This paper studies how students’ SRL behavior and achievement goal orientation change over time in a large (N = 250) college introductory level physics course taught online. Students’ achievement goal orientation was measured by repeated administration of the achievement goals questionnaire-revised (AGQ-R). Students’ SRL behavior was measured by analyzing their clickstream event traces interacting with online learning modules via a combination of trace clustering and process mining. Event traces were first divided into groups similar in nature using agglomerative clustering, with similarity between traces determined based on a set of derived characteristics most reflective of students’ SRL processes. We then generated causal nets for each cluster of traces via process mining and interpreted the underlying behavior and strategy of each causal net according to the COPES SRL framework. We then measured the frequency at which students adopted each causal net and assessed whether the adoption of different causal nets was associated with responses to the AGQ-R. By repeating the analysis for three sets of online learning modules assigned at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester, we examined how the frequency of each causal net changed over time, and how the change correlated with changes to the AGQ-R responses. Results have implications for measuring the temporal nature of SRL during online learning, as well as the factors impacting the use of SRL processes in an online physics course. Results also provide guidance for developing online instructional materials that foster effective SRL for students with different motivational profiles.

Investigation of the Interaction of Students’ Mental Models with Peer Instructional Elements in an Undergraduate Physics Course

Peer Instruction (PI) involves interaction between students and provides opportunities for students to reveal their own ideas, articulate their thinking, and facilitate construction of their knowledge with social interaction. Since the classroom environment of PI provides a rich information for students to discuss scientific phenomena, this research examined how students’ mental models interacted with Peer Instructional elements in an undergraduate level physics course. After the identification of students’ mental models of wave-particle duality in the first step of the project, the analyses of several data sources showed that some group-related issues, such as the explanatory based annotations before classes, good performance answering conceptual questions and discussion of additional concepts during classes, were important for scientific understanding. When students have similar group environments (i.e., peers in the same group), then individual pre-class preparation had a positive influence on students' scientific mental models of wave-particle duality. In addition, students having scientific models indicated that the satisfaction with their knowledge and the importance of conflict with their peers for their learning. All students in the classroom stated they benefited from peer discussions in different ways such as by recalling and reinforcing their knowledge, by getting feedback, and by reconstructing their knowledge. Both pre-class preparation and discussion of additional concepts and conflicting ideas in peer groups should be promoted in physics classes for facilitation of construction of scientific mental models.

For physics majors, gender differences in introductory physics do not inform future physics performance

Analysis of institutional data for physics majors showing predictive relationships between required mathematics and physics courses in various years is important for contemplating how the courses build on each other and whether there is need to make changes to the curriculum for the majors to strengthen these relationships. We used 15 years of institutional data at a US-based large research university to investigate how introductory physics and mathematics courses predict male and female physics majors’ performance on required advanced physics and mathematics courses. We used structure equation modeling (SEM) to investigate these predictive relationships and find that among introductory and advanced physics and mathematics courses, there are gender differences in performance in favor of male students only in the introductory physics courses after controlling for high school GPA. We found that a measurement invariance fully holds in a multi-group SEM by gender, so it was possible to carry out analysis with gender mediated by introductory physics and high school GPA. Moreover, we find that these introductory physics courses that have gender differences do not predict performance in advanced physics courses. In other words, students could be using invalid data about their introductory physics performance to make their decision about whether physics is the right field for them to pursue, and those invalid data in introductory physics favor male students. Also, introductory mathematics courses predict performance in advanced mathematics courses which in turn predict performance in advanced physics courses. Furthermore, apart from the introductory physics courses that do not predict performance in future physics courses, there is a strong predictive relationship between the sophomore, junior and senior level physics courses.

PhysLab: a 3D virtual physics laboratory of simulated experiments for advanced physics learning

We introduce a virtual physics laboratory, ‘PhysLab’, created using 3D video game technology suitable for advanced level physics courses in secondary schools. This comprises 32 simulated experiments covering a range of physics topics, selected in collaboration with practicing school teachers. PhysLab is made available at no cost for the physics education community as an installable application, ready to run, while giving the instructor some control over how information is displayed, and suitable ranges of experimental parameters. While we focus on the theory, design and pedagogical aspects of PhysLab, we provide some critical reflections on the use of simulations in physics teaching in general, and especially how these could be most effectively used in the physics classroom. The experiments are classified according to their nature: supporting theory; ‘What if’-scenarios, like playing badminton on the Moon; or as hypothetical situations, such as what happens if you drop your home town into a hole through the centre of the Earth. It is not our intention to advocate the replacement of real practical work; we suggest various ways in which simulations can be integrated into the classroom, including instruction and real practical work. We also discuss the details of several PhysLab simulations: the Wilberforce Pendulum; oscillations of a mass on a rubber band, which involves non-linearity; the Drude theory of electrical conduction; the Cyclotron, and a ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’.

Teaching Biophysics in an Undergraduate Curriculum

Simply put, the field of biophysics is the intersection of biology and physics. In this field, the concepts and principles of physics are used to explain biological processes. Also, physical principles and tools are used to solve biological and medical problems. Additionally, biophysics involves the development of instrumentation and methodologies to study biomedical and environmental phenomena. It is known that many institutions in the United States and around the world, do not offer biophysics courses at the undergraduate level. This is due, in part, to the need for a good exposure and mastery of both introductory and upper level physics courses before application to biological systems. The computational and mathematical skills needed for such applications are developed in these physics classes. While most physics programs do not require students to take biology courses, most biology programs do not require students to take calculus-based physics courses. This weakens the preparation of both the physics students and the biology students towards careers in biophysics. In most institutions, physics for life sciences is taught from the algebra-based approach, denying students exposure to advanced mathematical skills needed in biophysics. We propose that students interested in biophysics should take calculus-based physics at the introductory level, and that physics students should have some exposure to biology courses. This will ensure adequate preparation of students for upper level and graduate level biophysics classes.

Students Conception of Voltage and Resistance Concepts after Conventional Instruction

The purpose of this study was to determine the level of conceptions reached by students’ who learnt the concepts of voltage and resistance with the conventional direct instruction. To answer the research questions, descriptive non-experimental research design was used. A two tier test on the concepts of voltage and resistance was administered to 49 physics and chemistry major first year students in Medda Walabu University, Ethiopia. Students’ responses to the five items were qualitatively compared to those found in literature for secondary school and university students. The result showed that the conception of students formed at school level about voltage and resistance were not that much affected even by learning the same concepts at advanced levels and with mathematical rigor at university. Besides, the analysis revealed that students hold multiple opposing ideas regarding the same concept, which contradicts the classical conceptual change perspective. Further, the average conception level reached by the students after learning university level physics courses was “partial understanding”. Therefore, attending advanced but traditional course would not enhance students’ conceptual understanding. Hence, teachers should have to investigate students’ conceptions, as a first step, to subsequently design and implement appropriate instructional interventions.

Probing students’ conceptions at the classical-quantum interface

Quantum mechanics (QM) is one of the core subject areas in the undergraduate physics curriculum and many of the advanced level physics courses involve direct or indirect application of the concepts and ideas taught in QM. On the other hand, proper understanding of QM interpretations requires an optimum level of understanding of fundamental concepts in classical physics such as energy, momentum, force and their role in determining motion of the particle. This study is an attempt to explore a group of undergraduate students’ mental models regarding fundamental concepts in classical physics which are actually the stepping stone for understanding and visualisation of QM. The data and analysis presented here elucidate the challenges students face to understand the classical ideas and how that affects their understanding of QM.

Actividades didácticas para el tono como cualidad del sonido, en cursos de física del nivel básico, mediadas por la tecnología digital

El propósito de este artículo es promover la comprensión del tono como cualidad del sonido y de los conceptos matemáticos asociados a su modelización, mediante el diseño y la aplicación de actividades didácticas. El concepto de sonido y sus cualidades forman parte del programa de estudios de segundo grado de la educación básica de física en México y del cuarto grado de secundaria en Colombia (edades entre 13 y 15 años). Para el diseño de las actividades se requirió el empleo de aplicaciones informáticas (apps) dispuestas en dispositivos móviles como laboratorio portable, un marco didáctico y el desarrollo de una propuesta de modelización. La experiencia se implementó en dos países y se desarrolló en cuatro fases. Se mostrarán evidencias del cambio conceptual en los estudiantes.

Comparing different approaches to visualizing light waves: An experimental study on teaching wave optics

Research has shown that students have tremendous difficulties developing a qualitative understanding of wave optics, at all educational levels. In this study, we investigate how three different approaches to visualizing light waves affect students’ understanding of wave optics. In the first, the conventional, approach light waves are represented by sinusoidal curves. The second teaching approach includes representing light waves by a series of static images, showing the oscillating electric field vectors at characteristic, subsequent instants of time. Within the third approach phasors are used for visualizing light waves. A total of N=85 secondary school students were randomly assigned to one of the three teaching approaches, each of which lasted a period of four class hours. Students who learned with phasors and students who learned from the series of static images outperformed the students learning according to the conventional approach, i.e., they showed a much better understanding of basic wave optics, as measured by a conceptual survey administered to the students one week after the treatment. Our results suggest that visualizing light waves with phasors or oscillating electric field vectors is a promising approach to developing a deeper understanding of wave optics for students enrolled in conceptual level physics courses. (IPN/Orig.)

THE IMPACT OF PEER INSTRUCTION ON COLLEGE STUDENTS’ BELIEFS ABOUT PHYSICS AND CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM

The purpose of this study is to assess students’ conceptual learning of electricity and magnetism and examine how these conceptions, beliefs about physics, and quantitative problem-solving skills would change after peer instruction (PI). The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM), Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS), multiple-choice test was administered as a pre- and posttest with Solomon 4 group design to students (N = 138) enrolled on freshman level physics course. The number of chapter taught to the students was 14. Problem-solving strategy steps were asked to students in the exam. The analyses of CSEM showed that the treatment group (g = 0.62) obtained significantly higher conceptual learning gain than the control group (g = 0.36). The conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills of the students on magnetism considerably enhanced when PI was conducted (37% and 20%, respectively). CLASS results for 5 subscales (conceptual understanding, applied conceptual understanding, problem solving general, problem solving confidence, and problem solving sophistication) supported the findings of CSEM.

A structural equation model of expertise in college physics.

A model of expertise in physics was tested on a sample of 374 college students in 2 different level physics courses. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesized relationships among variables linked to expert performance in physics including strategy use, pictorial representation, categorization skills, and motivation, and these variables were examined for their influence on physics achievement. Gender was included in the model to examine how it influenced achievement indirectly through its influence on the other variables in the model. Two levels of expertise were examined by testing the model on trigonometry-based physics students and on more advanced, calculus-based physics students. Results were similar across both levels of expertise: For both courses, student motivation had a significant influence on students' strategy use and categorization skills. Categorization skills, in turn, influenced student achievement directly, and indirectly, through strategy use. Strategy use had a significant influence on achievement. Pictorial representation played little role in the model. Gender contributed primarily through motivation, but for the more advanced level course it also directly predicted strategy use.

On compressive radial tidal forces

Radial tidal forces can be compressive instead of disruptive, a possibility that is frequently overlooked in high level physics courses. For example, radial tidal compression can emerge in extended stellar systems containing a smaller stellar cluster. For particular conditions the tidal field produced by this extended mass distribution can exert on the cluster it contains compressive effects instead of the common disruptive forces. This interesting aspect of gravity can be derived from standard relations given in many textbooks and introductory courses in astronomy and can serve as an opportunity to look closer at some aspects of gravitational physics, stellar dynamics, and differential geometry. The existence of compressive tides at the center of huge stellar systems might suggest new evolutionary scenarios for the formation of stars and primordial galactic formation processes.

The Rod and Bottle System: A Problem in Statics

The rod and bottle system (sometimes called the “wine butler”), shown in Fig. 1, is a common statics demonstration1 in the introductory level physics course. One is immediately attracted to it by the craftsmanship in wood. Thomas Carlyle wrote, “Two men I honour, and no third. The scholar and the craftsman.”2 This paper presents an analytic treatment of the system.

Medical physics: the perfect intermediate level physics class

Medical physics is currently a rapidly growing field of physics. Numerousacademic, clinical and industrial opportunities are open to physicists in themedical world. I report on an intermediate level physics course on medicalphysics taught at Carleton College. The topics covered in this course coverall areas of physics, but with examples drawn from medical applications. Inaddition to physics majors, this course appeals to biology, chemistry andpre-medical students who have a keen interest in physics.

TEACHING NOTES

The text of the article is available in the PDF.

Electronics in schools

In his article on whether or not an electronics component should be included in an A–level physics course (Physics Bulletin March 1982 p96), Dr I R Gomersall raises an issue which has troubled subject panel members for many years. There is incidentally a comparable, if not greater, problem at the O– and CSE–level, if only because of the larger and more diverse number of pupils involved.