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Register a new userAn Investigation into the Correlations between Students Written Responses to Lecture-Tutorial Questions and their Understandings of Key Astrophysics Concepts
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This paper reports on an investigation into the correlations between students understandings of introductory astronomy concepts and the correctness and coherency of their written responses to targeted Lecture-Tutorial questions. We assessed the correctness and coherency of responses from 454 college-level, general education, introductory astronomy students enrolled in courses taught in the spring of 2010, 2011, and 2012. We hypothesized that students who consistently provided responses with high levels of correctness and coherency would outperform students who did not on multiple measures of astronomy content knowledge. We compared students correctness and coherency scores to their normalized gains on the Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory (LSCI) and to their scores on closely-related exam items. Our analysis revealed that no significant correlations exist between students correctness and coherency scores and their LSCI gain scores or exam item scores. However, the participant group in our study did achieve high scores on the LSCI and on closely-related exam items. We hypothesized that these differences are due to the discussions that take place between students which suggests that instructors who teach with active engagement instructional strategies should focus their implementation on ensuring that their students fully engage in the richest possible discourse.
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The ground-breaking image of a black holes event horizon, which captured the publics attention and imagination in April 2019, was captured using the power of interferometry: many separate telescopes working together to observe the cosmos in incredible detail. Many recent astrophysical discoveries that have revolutionized the scientific communitys understanding of the cosmos were made by interferometers such as LIGO, ALMA, and the Event Horizon Telescope. Astro 101 instructors who want their students to learn the science behind these discoveries must teach about interferometry. Decades of research show that using active learning strategies can significantly increase students learning and reduces achievement gaps between different demographic groups over what is achieved from traditional lecture-based instruction. As part of an effort to create active learning materials on interferometry, we developed and tested a new Lecture-Tutorial to help Astro 101 students learn about key properties of astronomical interferometers. This paper describes this new Lecture-Tutorial and presents evidence for its effectiveness from a study conducted with 266 Astro 101 students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
We investigate if the visual representation of vectors can affect which methods students use to add them. We gave students one of four questions with different graphical representations, asking students to add the same two vectors. For students in an algebra-based class the arrangement of the vectors had a statistically significant effect on the vector addition method chosen while the addition or removal of a grid did not.
It has become increasingly common for high-school students to see media reports on the importance of quantum mechanics in the development of next-generation industries such as drug development and secure communication, but few of them have been exposed to fundamental quantum mechanical concepts in a meaningful classroom activity. In order to bridge this gap, we design and test a low-cost 20-minute demonstration of the Bell test, which is used in several entanglement-based quantum key distribution protocols. The demonstration introduces ideas such as the quantum state, quantum measurement, spin quantization, cryptography, and entanglement; all without using concepts beyond the 9th grade of the Chilean high-school curriculum. The demonstration can serve to promote early exposure of the future adopters and developers of quantum technology with its conceptual building blocks, and also to educate the general public about the importance of quantum mechanics in modern industry
Research-based assessment instruments (RBAIs) are ubiquitous throughout both physics instruction and physics education research. The vast majority of analyses involving student responses to RBAI questions have focused on whether or not a student selects correct answers and using correctness to measure growth. This approach often undervalues the rich information that may be obtained by examining students particular choices of incorrect answers. In the present study, we aim to reveal some of this valuable information by quantitatively determining the relative correctness of various incorrect responses. To accomplish this, we propose an assumption that allow us to define relative correctness: students who have a high understanding of Newtonian physics are likely to answer more questions correctly and also more likely to choose better incorrect responses, than students who have a low understanding. Analyses using item response theory align with this assumption, and Bocks nominal response model allows us to uniquely rank each incorrect response. We present results from over 7,000 students responses to the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation.
Learning physics is a context dependent process. I consider a broader interdisciplinary problem of where differences in understanding and reasoning arise. I suggest the long run effects a multiple choice based learning system as well as society cultural habits and rules might have on student reasoning structure.
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