Millikan Lecture 1996: Promoting active learning based on physics education research in introductory physics courses

One of the problems we face in teaching introductory physics courses at the college level is that about 2/3 of students never had physics prior coming to college. Thus, many students find it very difficult to learn physics for the first time at the relatively fast-paced teaching of college physics courses. Sometimes the drop/failure/withdrawal rate at West Virginia University is as high as 65% (~2/3) for the introductory physics courses taken mostly by pre-engineering students. Obviously, there is a strong connection between the students’ physics backgrounds and the success rate of passing physics. With the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, we created an intervention course for a small group of students who did poorly in the first test in one of the physics courses. This intervention course ran concurrently with the regular physics course, but started at the fourth week of class after the first test. Students who received our intervention showed significant improvement in the subsequent physics tests.1 The recruitment of the students and the supervision of the course were the result of a unique collaboration between the College of Engineering and the Physics Department. After the expiration of the NSF grant, the intervention course was cancelled due to the lack of funds. The labs associated with physics classes, however, give us the opportunity to continue the advancement of physics learning after the ending of the NSF grant.

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REVIEW OF TRENDS IN PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH USING TOPIC MODELING

Journal of Baltic Science Education ◽

10.33225/jbse/20.19.388 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 19 (3) ◽

pp. 388-400 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Eunjeong Yun

Keyword(s):

Education Research ◽

Physics Education ◽

Topic Modeling ◽

Introductory Physics ◽

Research Trend ◽

Physics Education Research ◽

Pedagogical Content ◽

Future Studies ◽

The Status ◽

And Gender

For both physicists who teach students in university and physics educators, how physics should be taught is a vital question. This study reviewed the trends of research in the field of physics education to identify the status of physics education research and help researchers in future studies. 2,959 articles were collected from the American Journal of Physics (AJP) and 745 articles from the Physics Review Physics Education Research (PRPER). Abstracts of the collected articles were used for the study. After preprocessing the texts of the abstracts, topics were extracted from the texts using topic modeling. The Late Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model of Mallet was used for topic modeling. A total of 13 topics were extracted from the two journals. In recent years, “pedagogical content of knowledge (PCK),” “assessment” of achievement and “gender” of student have been topics of increasing interest; “teacher education” and “students’ reasoning process” have been topics with continuous high interest, and “introductory physics” and “problem solving” in physics have been topics with decreasing interest. Keywords: physics education research, physics education, research trend, topic modeling.

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Physics education research for 21st century learning

Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research ◽

10.1186/s43031-019-0007-8 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Lei Bao ◽

Kathleen Koenig

Keyword(s):

Education Research ◽

Physics Education ◽

Global Economy ◽

First Century ◽

Physics Education Research ◽

Future Research ◽

Physics Courses ◽

Twenty First Century ◽

Twenty First Century Skills ◽

New Education

AbstractEducation goals have evolved to emphasize student acquisition of the knowledge and attributes necessary to successfully contribute to the workforce and global economy of the twenty-first Century. The new education standards emphasize higher end skills including reasoning, creativity, and open problem solving. Although there is substantial research evidence and consensus around identifying essential twenty-first Century skills, there is a lack of research that focuses on how the related subskills interact and develop over time. This paper provides a brief review of physics education research as a means for providing a context towards future work in promoting deep learning and fostering abilities in high-end reasoning. Through a synthesis of the literature around twenty-first Century skills and physics education, a set of concretely defined education and research goals are suggested for future research, along with how these may impact the next generation physics courses and how physics should be taught in the future.

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