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Register a new userDevelopment and Validation of a conceptual survey instrument to evaluate introductory physics students understanding of thermodynamics
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We discuss the development and validation of a conceptual multiple-choice survey instrument called the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws (STPFaSL) suitable for introductory physics courses. The survey instrument uses common student difficulties with these concepts as resources in that the incorrect answers to the multiple-choice questions were guided by them. After the development and validation of the survey instrument, the final version was administered at six different institutions. It was administered to introductory physics students in various traditionally taught calculus-based and algebra-based classes in paper-pencil format before and after traditional lecture-based instruction in relevant concepts. We also administered the survey instrument to upper-level undergraduates majoring in physics and Ph.D. students for bench marking and for content validity and compared their performance with those of introductory students for whom the survey is intended. We find that although the survey instrument focuses on thermodynamics concepts covered in introductory courses, it is challenging even for advanced students. A comparison with the base line data on the validated survey instrument presented here can help instructors evaluate the effectiveness of innovative pedagogies designed to help students develop a solid grasp of these concepts.
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Physics lab courses are an essential part of the physics undergraduate curriculum. Learning goals for these classes often include the ability to interpret measurements and uncertainties. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is an established open-response survey that probes students understanding of measurement uncertainty along three dimensions: data collection, data analysis, and data comparison. It classifies students reasoning into point-like and set-like paradigms, with the set-like paradigm more aligned with expert reasoning. In the context of a course transformation effort at the University of Colorado Boulder, we examine over 500 student responses to the PMQ both before and after instruction in the pre-transformed course. We describe changes in students overall reasoning, measured by aggregating four probes of the PMQ. In particular, we observe large shifts towards set-like reasoning by the end of the course.
As part of a larger research project into massively open online courses (MOOCs), we have investigated student background, as well as student participation in a physics MOOC with a laboratory component. Students completed a demographic survey and the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation at the beginning of the course. While the course is still actively running, we have tracked student participation over the first five weeks of the eleven-week course.
Four sections of introductory physics for physical scientists and engineers (about 180 students each) are compared. One section, treatment group, was organized so that students worked to learn the classical ideas connecting forces and motion over the first 6 weeks of the 10 week quarter and then used the final 4 weeks to apply those principles to algebraically complicated problems. The other sections learned ideas at essentially the same time as calculations over the entire 10 weeks of the quarter. The treatment group and one of the control sections were taught by the same instructor, had identical curricular materials and this instructor was blind to the comparison measure, the final exam. After controlling for GPA as well as for incoming conceptual understanding, the treatment group was found (with greater than 99% confidence) to perform better on the final exam than the control group taught by the same instructor and, by a similar measure, the treatment group performed significantly better than any other section. The treatment group also had higher conceptual learning gains and so should be better prepared for later learning.
The lack of diversity and the under-performance of underrepresented students in STEM courses have been the focus of researchers in the last decade. In particular, many hypotheses have been put forth for the reasons for the under-representation and under-performance of women in physics. Here, we present a framework for helping all students learn in science courses that takes into account four factors: 1) characteristics of instruction and learning tools, 2) implementation of instruction and learning tools, 3) student characteristics, and 4) students environments. While there has been much research on factor 1 (characteristics of instruction and learning tools), there has been less focus on factor 2 (students characteristics, and in particular, motivational factors). Here, we focus on the baseline motivational characteristics of introductory physics students obtained from survey data to inform factor 2 of the framework. A longitudinal analysis of students motivational characteristics in two-semester introductory physics courses was performed by administering pre- and post-surveys that evaluated students self-efficacy, grit, fascination with physics, value associated with physics, intelligence mindset, and physics epistemology. Female students reported lower self-efficacy, fascination and value, and had a more fixed view of intelligence in the context of physics compared to male students. Grit was the only factor on which female students reported averages that were equal to or higher than male students throughout introductory physics courses. These gender differences can at least partly be attributed to the societal stereotypes and biases about who belongs in physics and can excel in it. The findings inform the framework and have implications for the development and implementation of effective pedagogies and learning tools to help all students learn.
In an Introductory Physics for Life Science (IPLS) course that leverages authentic biological examples, student ideas about entropy as disorder or chaos come into contact with their ideas about the spontaneous formation of organized biological structure. It is possible to reconcile the natural tendency to disorder with the organized clustering of macromolecules, but doing so in a way that will be meaningful to students requires that we take seriously the ideas about entropy and spontaneity that students bring to IPLS courses from their prior experiences in biology and chemistry. We draw on case study interviews to argue that an approach that emphasizes the interplay of energy and entropy in determining spontaneity (one that involves a central role for free energy) is one that draws on students resources from biology and chemistry in particularly effective ways. We see the positioning of entropic arguments alongside energetic arguments in the determination of spontaneity as an important step toward making our life science students biology, chemistry, and physics experiences more coherent.
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