United States

AAPT SM 20

Professional Development Pathways to Integrate Computing in Physics First

modeling instruction

physics first

computational modeling

The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. The program featured plenary speakers, sessions, workshops and many special activities.

For more information please visit the 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting page at: https://www.aapt.org/Conferences/SM2020/index.cfm.


The 2020 AAPT Virtual Summer Meeting brought together physics educators from around the globe to learn about the latest in physics theory, research methodology and education from leaders in their field. 

poster

Developing an Interactive Tutorial on a Quantum Eraser

Self-efficacy is an important predictor of intention to continue in physics and is influenced by students’ experiences in the classroom. In this study, students in AP Physics 1 were interviewed at the end of the course to identify the kinds of classroom experiences that impacted their beliefs about their ability to do physics. Labs were mentioned by nearly all students as an important factor, though whether students saw labs as having a positive or negative impact on their self-efficacy depended on certain characteristics of the lab. Many students, especially boys, also discussed peer interaction while working problems as an experience that improved their self-efficacy. Many students also discussed assessment feedback as evidence their teacher believed they are good at physics, though boys focused on assessments where they scored well while girls discussed assessments where they scored poorly.

Gender, Self-Efficacy, & Classroom Experiences in AP Physics 1

Physics education is full of instances of those who have abandoned reforms because they did not seem to work. Surprise: A talk or even a workshop is not enough to provide instructors deep conceptual understanding of how students learn physics! Courses are complicated systems that must be well designed to provide the best learning experience possible and significant learning can take place in many different types of courses. The science of teaching begins with understanding what student behaviors lead to learning. Many of the elements behind effective reformed courses have the same student behavior goal. Focusing on these goals may help faculty implement effective reformed instruction. I will present some of these important behaviors. Getting students to engage in them leads to improved learning. The art comes in with the question: Can we get the students to like it?

The basic science of teaching to improve practice and outcomes

Computational thinking (CT) is still a relatively new term in the lexicon of learning objectives and science standards. In 2013, the authors of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) included “mathematical and computational thinking" as one of eight essential science and engineering practices that K-12 teachers should strive to develop in their students. (1) There is not yet widespread agreement on the precise definition or implementation of CT, and efforts to assess CT are still maturing, even as more states adopt K-12 computer science standards. (2) In this presentation, we will try to summarize what CT means for a typical introductory (i.e., high school or early college) physics class. This will include a discussion of the ways that instructors may already be incorporating elements of CT in their classes without knowing it. Our intention is to provide a helpful introduction to this topic for physics instructors.

Computational Thinking in Introductory Physics: High School and Early College

The AAPT Speakers Bureau provides AAPT members with an opportunity to share their passion, excitement and expertise in physics with the public as well as students at all levels. I have always enjoyed sharing my passion for quantum physics with the public and K-16 students. Quantum mechanics is a powerful and mysterious theory. It is our best theory for explaining everything we understand about the properties of matter and the world around us. This understanding has led to incredible transformation of science and technology in the last century. However, even Einstein was disturbed by some of its predictions. We are still doing experiments to understand the most unsettling predictions and foundations of quantum physics. At the same time, researchers are using the most bizarre aspects of quantum theory to create new technologies like quantum computers. It is never too early to learn about the fascinating mysteries of quantum physics.

AAPT Speakers Bureau: Mysteries of quantum physics

The meaning and representation of basis is fundamental to many quantum mechanics topics, including probability, measurement, and time evolution. Furthermore, students are often required to change the basis of a state in order to gain other information about a system. Data collected from “spins-first” courses across three institutions has illuminated a variety of challenges for students, related to procedures, interpretation, and notation. To help improve student understanding, we designed an activity that makes an analogy between spin basis vectors and more familiar two-dimensional Cartesian unit vectors. In this activity, students draw vectors for a state and discover that changing the basis is analogous to using a different set of coordinate axes to represent the same state. We provide evidence that this activity supported students in their understanding of basis representation and in the procedure of changing basis.

From Cartesian to Hilbert space: Improving understanding of quantum bases

There have been many recent calls to overhaul the introductory lab course. This is because it doesn’t meet a commonly stated goal of reinforcing lecture content (Holmes et al., Physics Today, 2018), nor is it focused on teaching experimental skills like designing experiments and analyzing data (Kozminski et al., AAPT, 2014). In addition, it doesn’t teach computational modeling—where students use computational tools to conceive, construct, or test models—even though the laboratory is where this modeling would naturally occur (Behringer et al., AAPT, 2017). One method to overhaul the course that is gaining traction is to have students engage in open-ended projects. I will discuss implementation of this method and how it can be used to teach computational modeling to introductory students without any computational skills. This discussion will include computational practicums, emphasizing modeling in the lab notebook, requiring students to vary two variables in their models, and building in iteration.

Adding Computation to the Introductory Physics Lab

To assist physics departments and faculty as they improve undergraduate education, the American Physical Society, in collaboration with the American Association of Physics Teachers, is developing a comprehensive guide for program improvement and evaluation, drawn from research findings and community knowledge. Scheduled for release in late 2020, the guide will provide concise advice on nearly all aspects of undergraduate education including suggestions on how to effectively evaluate impact. The EP3 guide will also offer departments guidance on how to produce detailed evidence of how they plan, evaluate, and improve undergraduate learning to help meet university accreditation requirements or prepare for or conduct external site reviews. This presentation will give a broad introduction to the guide and solicit feedback from the audience on how best to make these materials available to the community.

A Guide to Department Improvement: Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3)

Many instructors are working to transform their traditional labs to better develop scientific thinking, reasoning, and decision-making abilities. Traditional labs, defined as being highly structured (students follow a predetermined protocol) and confirmatory (that protocol is supposed to demonstrate a predetermined physics principle), have long been criticized for not engaging students with authentic experimentation. As defined, students have very little opportunity or incentive to make decisions or think critically about the experiments or results. In response, we often default to reducing structure and affording more agency so students can practice making experimentation decisions. Research is suggesting that this response may be overly simplistic. In this talk, I’ll discuss the nuances of structure and agency in teaching scientific decision-making and argue that the role of confirmation may actually be the more critical issue than structure.

The role of structure & confirmation in developing scientific thinking, reasoning, & decision-making abilities

Interactive video-enhanced tutorials (IVETs) involve web-based activities which lead students through a solution using expert-like problem-solving approaches, such as those needed for solving problems involving conservation of energy or linear momentum. Under NSF funding we have been developing and evaluating multiple IVETs for use with college students in introductory physics. This presentation will showcase our research methods and the impact of various IVETs on student problem-solving abilities.

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