The Blackboard Learning System™, a Web- based server software system, is widely used on many college and university campuses today. This paper explores the use of the Blackboard system as a teaching and learn- ing tool. Particular... more
The Blackboard Learning System™, a Web- based server software system, is widely used on many college and university campuses today. This paper explores the use of the Blackboard system as a teaching and learn- ing tool. Particular emphasis is placed on the online chat feature available through the Blackboard interface. During the fall 2002 pilot semester, students enrolled in an
The aim of this paper is to report on a three‐year follow‐up evaluation of an experimental problem‐based learning (PBL) integrated curriculum directed to second‐year engineering students. The PBL curriculum brought together the contents... more
The aim of this paper is to report on a three‐year follow‐up evaluation of an experimental problem‐based learning (PBL) integrated curriculum directed to second‐year engineering students. The PBL curriculum brought together the contents of physics, mathematics and computer science courses into a single course. Instead of the students having to enroll in each course separately, they had the opportunity to
Background: Drawing on social identity theory and positive psychology, this study investigated women’s responses to the social environment of physics classrooms. It also investigated STEM identity and gender disparities on academic... more
Background: Drawing on social identity theory and positive psychology, this study investigated women’s responses to the social environment of physics classrooms. It also investigated STEM identity and gender disparities on academic achievement and flourishing in an undergraduate introductory physics course for STEM majors. One hundred sixty undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory physics course were administered a baseline survey with selfreport measures on course belonging, physics identification, flourishing, and demographics at the beginning of the course and a post-survey at the end of the academic term. Students also completed force concept inventories, and physics course grades were obtained from the registrar. Results: Women reported less course belonging and less physics identification than men. Physics identification and grades evidenced a longitudinal bidirectional relationship for all students (regardless of gender) such that when controlling for baseline physics knowledge: (a) students with higher physics identification were more likely to earn higher grades; and (b) students with higher grades evidenced more physics identification at the end of the term. Men scored higher on the force concept inventory than women; although no gender disparities emerged for course grades. For women, higher physics (versus lower) identification was associated with more positive changes in flourishing over the course of the term. High-identifying men showed the opposite pattern: negative change in flourishing was more strongly associated with high identifiers than low identifiers. Conclusions: Overall, this study underlines gender disparities in physics both in terms of belonging and physics knowledge. It suggests that strong STEM identity may be associated with academic performance and flourishing in undergraduate physics courses at the end of the term, particularly for women. A number of avenues for future research are discussed.
Background: Drawing on social identity theory and positive psychology, this study investigated women’s responses to the social environment of physics classrooms. It also investigated STEM identity and gender disparities on academic... more
Background: Drawing on social identity theory and positive psychology, this study investigated women’s responses to the social environment of physics classrooms. It also investigated STEM identity and gender disparities on academic achievement and flourishing in an undergraduate introductory physics course for STEM majors. One hundred sixty undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory physics course were administered a baseline survey with selfreport measures on course belonging, physics identification, flourishing, and demographics at the beginning of the course and a post-survey at the end of the academic term. Students also completed force concept inventories, and physics course grades were obtained from the registrar. Results: Women reported less course belonging and less physics identification than men. Physics identification and grades evidenced a longitudinal bidirectional relationship for all students (regardless of gender) such that when controlling for baseline physi...
The purpose of this study was to determine if there are relationship among freshmen students' Field depended or field independent (FD/FI) cognitive style, conceptual understandings, and problem solving skills in mechanics. The... more
The purpose of this study was to determine if there are relationship among freshmen students' Field depended or field independent (FD/FI) cognitive style, conceptual understandings, and problem solving skills in mechanics. The sample consisted of 213 ...
The modeling instruction pedagogy for the teaching of physics has been proven to be quite effective at increasing the conceptual understanding and problem-solving abilities of students to a much greater extent than that of nonmodeling... more
The modeling instruction pedagogy for the teaching of physics has been proven to be quite effective at increasing the conceptual understanding and problem-solving abilities of students to a much greater extent than that of nonmodeling students. Little research has been conducted ...
ABSTRACT A 3-year follow-up evaluation was conducted of an experimental problem-based learning (PBL) integrated curriculum directed to students of the first 2 years of engineering. The PBL curriculum brought together the contents of... more
ABSTRACT A 3-year follow-up evaluation was conducted of an experimental problem-based learning (PBL) integrated curriculum directed to students of the first 2 years of engineering. The PBL curriculum brought together the contents of physics, mathematics, and computer science courses in a single course in which students worked on real-life problems. In order to assess academic achievement, three data sources were used: pretest and posttest scores on physics tests for two samples of students, grade point average of all students enrolled in the curriculum, and students' grades in advanced engineering courses in comparison with the grades of students in the traditional courses. A second source of data came from studies that evaluated the acquisition of professional skills. Test scores on critical thinking skills, as well as self-evaluation and co-evaluation tests were used. The final set of data attempted to assess how the PBL curriculum affected students' attitudes toward mathematics, physics, computer science, and education in general. The PBL curriculum seemed to improve the academic achievements of these students, but student attitudes were very similar to those of students in the traditional courses in spite of their enhanced academic achievement. Additional studies are planned to investigate students attitudes toward the PBL course and continued academic achievement. (Contains 12 figures, 3 tables, and 31 references.) (SLD)
Why/AutoTutor is a tutoring system that helps students construct answers to qualitative physics problems by holding a conversation in natural language. Why/AutoTutor provides feedback to the student on what the student types in (positive,... more
Why/AutoTutor is a tutoring system that helps students construct answers to qualitative physics problems by holding a conversation in natural language. Why/AutoTutor provides feedback to the student on what the student types in (positive, neutral, negative feedback), pumps the student for more information, prompts the student to fill in missing words, gives hints, fills in missing information with assertions, identifies and corrects bad answers and misconceptions, answers students' questions, and summarizes answers. In ...
The Blackboard Learning System?, a Webbased server software system, is widely used on many college and university campuses today. This paper explores the use of the Blackboard system as a teaching and learning tool. Particular emphasis is... more
The Blackboard Learning System?, a Webbased server software system, is widely used on many college and university campuses today. This paper explores the use of the Blackboard system as a teaching and learning tool. Particular emphasis is placed on the online chat feature available through the Blackboard interface. During the fall 2002 pilot semester, students enrolled in an introductory physics course for non-majors at American University made extensive use of live, interactive, online chats through Blackboard technologies to complete homework and other assignments. The optional chats were peer-led and instructor-moderated. The instructor utilized a Socratic dialogue approach to help promote deeper understanding of key topics and concepts. To address, in part, the question of whether deeper understanding was achieved for students who participated in the chats, results from the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), a widely used multiple-choice, survey-type instrument to assess student und...
Cette thèse porte sur l’évaluation de la cohérence du réseau conceptuel démontré par des étudiants de niveau collégial inscrits en sciences de la nature. L’évaluation de cette cohérence s’est basée sur l’analyse des tableaux de Burt issus... more
Cette thèse porte sur l’évaluation de la cohérence du réseau conceptuel démontré par des étudiants de niveau collégial inscrits en sciences de la nature. L’évaluation de cette cohérence s’est basée sur l’analyse des tableaux de Burt issus des réponses à des questionnaires à choix multiples, sur l’étude détaillée des indices de discrimination spécifique qui seront décrits plus en détail dans le corps de l’ouvrage et sur l’analyse de séquences vidéos d’étudiants effectuant une expérimentation en contexte réel. Au terme de ce projet, quatre grands axes de recherche ont été exploré. 1) Quelle est la cohérence conceptuelle démontrée en physique newtonienne ? 2) Est-ce que la maîtrise du calcul d’incertitude est corrélée au développement de la pensée logique ou à la maîtrise des mathématiques ? 3) Quelle est la cohérence conceptuelle démontrée dans la quantification de l’incertitude expérimentale ? 4) Quelles sont les procédures concrètement mise en place par des étudiants pour quantifier...
In this contribution we describe a short development course for in-service physics teachers. The course structure and materials are based on the results of educational research, and its main objective is to provide in-ser-vice teachers... more
In this contribution we describe a short development course for in-service physics teachers. The course structure and materials are based on the results of educational research, and its main objective is to provide in-ser-vice teachers with a first contact with the active learning ...
Background. Drawing on social identity theory and positive psychology, this study investigated women’s responses to the social environment of physics classrooms. It also investigated STEM identity and gender disparities on academic... more
Background. Drawing on social identity theory and positive psychology, this study investigated women’s responses to the social environment of physics classrooms. It also investigated STEM identity and gender disparities on academic achievement and flourishing in an undergraduate introductory physics course for STEM majors. 160 undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory physics course were administered a baseline survey with self-report measures on course belonging, physics identification, flourishing, and demographics at the beginning of the course and a post-survey at the end of the academic term. Students also completed force concept inventories and physics course grades were obtained from the registrar. Results. Women reported less course belonging and less physics identification than men. Physics identification and grades evidenced a longitudinal bidirectional relationship for all students (regardless of gender) such that when controlling for baseline physics knowledge: (a) students with higher physics identification were more likely to earn higher grades; and (b) students with higher grades evidenced more physics identification at the end of the term. Men scored higher on the force concept inventory than women, although no gender disparities emerged for course grades. For women, higher physics (versus lower) identification was associated with more positive changes in flourishing over the course of the term. High-identifying men showed the opposite pattern: negative change in flourishing was more strongly associated with high identifiers than low identifiers. Conclusions. Overall, this study underlines gender disparities in physics both in terms of belonging and physics knowledge. It suggests that strong STEM identity may be associated with academic performance and flourishing in undergraduate physics courses at the end of the term, particularly for women. A number of avenues for future research are discussed.
Why/AutoTutor is a tutoring system that helps students construct answers to qualitative physics problems by holding a conversation in natural language. Why/AutoTutor provides feedback to the student on what the student types in (positive,... more
Why/AutoTutor is a tutoring system that helps students construct answers to qualitative physics problems by holding a conversation in natural language. Why/AutoTutor provides feedback to the student on what the student types in (positive, neutral, negative feedback), pumps the student for more information, prompts the student to fill in missing words, gives hints, fills in missing information with assertions, identifies and corrects bad answers and misconceptions, answers students' questions, and summarizes answers. In ...
There is a body of research which shows that student views are not 'consistent' or 'coherent' after a course in mechanics. Most of this research do not, however, provide a detailed definition of what is meant by... more
There is a body of research which shows that student views are not 'consistent' or 'coherent' after a course in mechanics. Most of this research do not, however, provide a detailed definition of what is meant by consistency or coherence. In this paper we present a new way to ...
In physics, but also in science generally, concepts of students significantly affect the learning process. These concepts of how the world works, are also called preconceptions, misconceptions or mental models. Quantitative measurement of... more
In physics, but also in science generally, concepts of students significantly affect the learning process. These concepts of how the world works, are also called preconceptions, misconceptions or mental models. Quantitative measurement of students’ conceptual understanding can be done by using of content surveys, which reveal correct and incorrect mental models of students. Thanks to multiple-choice questions, answers to these surveys can be analyzed by many methods. One of the modern methods developed directly for content surveys is concentration analysis that quantifies the mental models used. For students’ success, the normalized gain is used, especially in physics education. The main objective of the research was to determine the efficiency of physics course and quantify the mental models of the students who participated in that course. With the emphasis on reproducible research in physics education research, we used dynamic document Jupyter in combination with statistical open-source software R. Using the content survey FCI and concentration analysis, we identified mental models of students in the field of mechanics (force and motion) conceptual understanding. Based on the normalized gain, we compared student success and evaluated efficiency of the physics course.
