Thompson Christensen Wittmann on graduate course in PER

John R. Thompson, Warren M. Christensen, Michael C. Wittmann

Preparing future teachers to anticipate student difficulties in physics in a graduate-level course in physics, pedagogy, and education research

We describe courses designed to help future teachers reflect on and discuss both physics content and student knowledge thereof. We use three kinds of activities: reading and discussing the literature, experiencing research-based curricular materials, and learning to use the basic research methods of physics education research. We present a general overview of the two courses we have designed as well as a framework for assessing student performance on physics content knowledge and one aspect of pedagogical content knowledge—knowledge of student ideas—about one particular content area: electric circuits. We find that the quality of future teachers’ responses, especially on questions dealing with knowledge of student ideas, can be successfully categorized and may be higher for those with a nonphysics background than those with a physics background.

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.7.010108
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.7.010108
PACS: 01.40.J-

Casey MST: Interaction and MPEX analysis of group learning behaviors

Casey Murphy

Answer-Seeking and Idea-Constructing During Collaborative Active-Learning Activities in a Physics Laboratory  

Unpublished MST thesis, University of Maine, 2010

Smith, Thompson, and Mountcastle on the Boltzmann Factor

Trevor I. Smith, John R. Thompson, and Donald B. Mountcastle

Addressing Student Difficulties with Statistical Mechanics: The Boltzmann Factor

AIP Conf. Proc. -- October 24, 2010 -- Volume 1289, pp. 305-308
2010 PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH CONFERENCE; doi:10.1063/1.3515230

As part of research into student understanding of topics related to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics at the upper division, we have identified student difficulties in applying concepts related to the Boltzmann factor and the canonical partition function. With this in mind, we have developed a guided-inquiry worksheet activity (tutorial) designed to help students develop a better understanding of where the Boltzmann factor comes from and why it is useful. The tutorial guides students through the derivation of both the Boltzmann factor and the canonical partition function. Preliminary results suggest that students who participated in the tutorial had a higher success rate on assessment items than students who had only received lecture instruction on the topic. We present results that motivate the need for this tutorial, the outline of the derivation used, and results from implementations of the tutorial. ©2010 American Institute of Physics

Hawkins et al. on vector addition

Jeffrey M. Hawkins, John R. Thompson, Michael C. Wittmann, Eleanor C. Sayre, and Brian W. Frank

Students' Responses To Different Representations Of A Vector Addition Question

AIP Conf. Proc. -- October 24, 2010 -- Volume 1289, pp. 165-168
2010 PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH CONFERENCE; doi:10.1063/1.3515188

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. ©2010 American Institute of Physics

Springuel Ph.D.: Cluster analysis in kinematics and the FMCE

R. Padraic Springuel

Applying Cluster Analysis to Physics Education Research Data

Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maine, 2010

Black Ph.D.: Air resistance problems, resources, and epistemic games

Katrina E. Black
Multiple Perspectives on Student Solution Methods for Air Resistance Problems
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maine, 2010

Frank on the stability of students' thinking

Brian W. Frank

Multiple Conceptual Coherences in the Speed Tutorial: Micro-processes of Local Stability
Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2010) - Volume 1, Full Papers, pp.873-881
Published on line at arXiv:1008.3258v1

Researchers working within knowledge-in-pieces traditions have often employed observational approaches to investigate micro-processes of learning. There is growing evidence from this line of work that students' intuitive thinking about physical phenomena is characterized more so by its diversity and flexibility than its uniformity and robustness. This characterization implies that much of the dynamics of students' thinking over short timescales involve processes that stabilize local patterns of thinking, later destabilize them, and allow other patterns to form. This kind of "change" may only involve dynamics by which the system of intuitive knowledge settles into various states without changing the system structure itself. I describe a case study in which a group of college students shift their thinking about motion several times during a collaborative learning activity. Instead of focusing on micro-processes of change, I describe these dynamics in terms of mechanisms that contribute to local stability of students' conceptual coherences.

Wittmann on conceptual blending in wave propagation

Michael C. Wittmann
Using conceptual blending to describe emergent meaning in wave propagation
Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on the Learning Sciences

Students in interviews on a wave physics topic give answers through embodied actions which connect their understanding of the physics to other common experiences. When answering a question about wavepulses propagating along a long taut spring, students' gestures help them recruit information about balls thrown the air. I analyze gestural, perceptual, and verbal information gathered using videotaped interviews and classroom interactions. I use conceptual blending to describe how different elements combine to create new, emergent meaning for the students and compare this to a knowledge-in-pieces approach.

Hayes and Wittmann on the use of signs

K. Hayes and M. C. Wittmann
The Role of Sign in Students' Modeling of Scalar Equations
The Physics Teacher 48, 246 (2010)

Helping students set up equations is one of the major goals of teaching a course in physics that contains elements of problem solving. Students must take the stories we present, interpret them, and turn them into physics; from there, they must turn that physical, idealized story into mathematics. How they do so and what problems lie along the way are a major source of difficulty for us as instructors. In this paper, we consider just one such difficulty, getting the plus and minus signs correct when setting a net force equal to mass times acceleration. Even in such simple equations, we find that students make common errors in how they connect the mathematics and the physics. Specifically, we have seen college physics students use physical and mathematical reasoning inconsistently when determining signs of terms in equations. The problem seems to lie in how a vector equation gets interpreted into a scalar equation (whose form depends on one's choice of coordinate system).

Springuel Thompson Wittmann correcting a past paper

R. Padraic Springuel, Michael C. Wittmann, and John R. Thompson
Erratum: Applying clustering to statistical analysis of student reasoning about two-dimensional kinematics [Phys Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 3, 020107 (2007)]

In our paper reported previously in this journal, we explored how cluster analysis, a method from data mining used to find natural groupings in data, could be used to categorize the responses given by students on a free-response question about acceleration in two dimensions. In the process of preparing to expand on that work, however, we discovered that our analysis was both incorrect and incomplete. We were incorrect in that we used default settings in our software package and thereby misidentified the distance measure used. We have since determined that this distance was not appropriate for our data coding. Furthermore, we were incomplete in that we were not sufficiently rigorous in our definition of groups of student responses. We have corrected both of these issues.

This is an erratum related to (and nearly longer than!) the paper found here.

Black and Wittmann on Resource Creation in Mechanics

Katrina E. Black and Michael C. Wittmann
Procedural Resource Creation in Intermediate Mechanics
AIP Conf. Proc. -- November 5, 2009 -- Volume 1179, pp. 97-101
2009 PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH CONFERENCE

A problem in resource theory is describing the creation of new, high-level resources. We model resource creation by analyzing four student groups separating variables in a group quiz setting. The task was to solve an air resistance problem with uncommon initial conditions. We assess the fluency of each group and two observables: use of overt (such as divide, subtract, equals) and covert (such as moving, bringing, or pulling over) mathematical and use of accompanying gestures (such as circling, grabbing, or sliding). For each group, the type of language and gesture used corresponds to how easily they carry out separation of variables. We create resource graphs for each group to organize our observations and use these graphs to model the creation of the procedural resource Separate Variables.

Wittmann, Anderson, and Smith on teaching Newton's Second Law

Michael C. Wittmann, Mindi Kvaal Anderson, and Trevor I. Smith
Comparing Three Methods for Teaching Newton's Second Law
AIP Conf. Proc. -- November 5, 2009 -- Volume 1179, pp. 301-304
2009 PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH CONFERENCE; doi:10.1063/1.3266742

As a follow-up to a study comparing learning of Newton's Third Law when using three different forms of tutorial instruction, we have compared student learning of Newton's Second Law (NSL) when students use the Tutorials in Introductory Physics, Activity-Based Tutorials, or Open Source Tutorials. We split an algebra-based, life sciences physics course in 3 groups and measured students' pre- and post-instruction scores on the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE). We look at only the NSL-related clusters of questions on the FMCE to compare students' performance and normalized gains. Students entering the course are not significantly different, and students using the Tutorials in Introductory Physics show the largest normalized gains in answering question on the FMCE correctly. These gains are significant in only one cluster of questions, the Force Sled cluster.

Hawkins, Thompson, and Wittmann on persistence of methods used to add vectors

Jeffrey M. Hawkins, John R. Thompson, and Michael C. Wittmann
Students Consistency of Graphical Vector Addition Method on 2-D Vector Addition Tasks
AIP Conf. Proc. -- November 5, 2009 -- Volume 1179, pp. 161-164
2009 PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH CONFERENCE; doi:10.1063/1.3266704

In a series of ten two-dimensional graphical vector addition questions with varying visual representations, most students stuck to a single solution method, be it correct or incorrect. Changes to the visual representation include placing vectors on a grid, making the vectors arrangements symmetric, varying the separation between vectors, and reversing the direction of either vector. We discuss the questions asked of students and their responses, emphasizing the results of one student who did change solution methods during an interview. ©2009 American Institute of Physics

Smith, Christensen, Thompson on entropy, engines, and cycles

Trevor I. Smith Warren M. Christensen and John R. Thompson
Addressing Student Difficulties with Concepts Related to Entropy, Heat Engines and the Carnot Cycle
AIP Conf. Proc. -- November 5, 2009 -- Volume 1179, pp. 277-280
2009 PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH CONFERENCE; doi:10.1063/1.3266735

We report the rationale behind and preliminary results from a guided-inquiry conceptual worksheet (a.k.a. tutorial) dealing with Carnot's efficiency and the Carnot cycle. The tutorial was administered in an upper-level thermodynamics course at the University of Maine. The tutorial was implemented as the third in a three-tutorial sequence designed to improve students' understanding of entropy and its applications. Initial pre- and post-tutorial assessment data suggest that student understanding of heat engines and the Carnot cycle improved as a result of tutorial instruction

Hayes MST: Language, discourse, and problem solving

Kate McCann Hayes
A qualititative analysis of student behavior and language during group problem solving
Unpublished MST thesis, University of Maine, August, 2009.