Wittmann on resource graphs

M.C. Wittmann
Using resource graphs to represent conceptual change
Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 2, 020105 (2006)

Nelson MST: Concentrated workshop on force and motion

David Nelson
"Effect of a Concentrated In-Service Elementary Teacher Force and Motion Workshop"
Unpublished M.S.T. thesis, August, 2006

The National Science Education Standards and Maine Learning Results outline a comprehensive program for facilitating children’s learning of basic concepts in force and motion. The program has goals for children as early as Kindergarten, but assumes the teachers in our primary schools are prepared to handle these concepts. Unfortunately our elementary school teacher’s training programs do not require in-depth instruction in the sciences, and many of our elementary school teachers have never received instruction in basic physics. Lacking mastery of the content, many in-service teachers doubt their ability to present science material in their classrooms, and sometimes avoid the material all together. While standard summer coursework is available that might improve teacher understanding of the concepts, it is difficult for many teachers to commit to a summer long program. Short courses and workshops are offered as alternatives in a number of venues that try to address these deficiencies. This research project investigates whether a concentrated workshop format can have a lasting impact on in-service teacher conceptual understanding and self-efficacy as they relate to force and motion. A concentrated one-week workshop featuring inquiry-based learning and including epistemological topics was developed and administered during the summer of 2005. The Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE) was used to measure gain in conceptual understanding, and the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX) and Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument (STEBI) were used to evaluate teacher attitudes, beliefs, and expectations relating to their own physics understanding and its role in their classrooms. While improvement was evident in both the FMCE and MPEX results, it is not clear that the amount of improvement produced is sufficient to fully prepare in-service teachers to facilitate learning in this area.

Wittmann, Morgan, Feeley on probability in quantum

M.C. Wittmann, J.T. Morgan, R.F. Feeley
Laboratory-tutorial activities for teaching probability
Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 2, 020104 (2006)

Wittmann on tutorials for teaching QM tunneling

M.C. Wittmann
Lab-Tutorials für den Quantenphysik Unterricht
Praxis der Naturwissenschaften – Physik, 55:4, 16-21.

Note that this paper is in German and that the arxiv.org publication contains only an English language abstract. The arxiv.org version is in much weaker German than the edited final version published in Praxis der Naturwissenschaften - Physik.

Morgan PhD: Quantum Tunneling

Jeffrey T. Morgan
Investigating How Students Think About and Learn Quantum Physics: An Example From Tunneling
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maine, 2006

Much of physics education research (PER) has focused on introductory courses and topics, with less research done into how students learn physics in advanced courses. Members of The University of Maine Physics Education Research Laboratory (PERL) have begun studying how students in advanced physics courses reason about classical mechanics, thermal physics, and quantum physics. Here, we describe an investigation into how students reason about quantum mechanical tunneling, and detail how those findings informed a portion of a curriculum development project. Quantum mechanical tunneling is a standard topic discussed in most modern physics and quantum physics courses. Understanding tunneling is crucial to making sense of several topics in physics, including scanning tunneling microscopy and nuclear decay. To make sense of the standard presentation of tunneling, students must track total, potential, and kinetic energies. Additionally, they must distinguish between the ideas of energy, probability density, and the wave function. They need to understand the complex nature of the wave function, as well as understand what can and cannot be inferred from a solution to the time-independent Schrödinger equation. Our investigations into student understanding of these ideas consisted of a series of interviews, as well as a survey. Both centered around asking students to reason about energy, probability, and the wave function solutions for the standard square potential energy barrier scenario presented in most textbooks. We describe ideas that students seem to successfully learn following standard instruction, as well as common difficulties that remain. Additionally, we present multiple data points from a small population of physics majors over three years and describe how some of their reasoning about tunneling changed, while other portions seemed to remain unaffected by instruction. We used the results of these investigations to write tutorials on tunneling and applications of tunneling. The tutorials were part of a course on introductory quantum physics for non-science majors. In this course, most of the ideas were introduced in the small-group, student-centered tutorial-labs. We present evidence that this population can learn some basic ideas of quantum physics, and on certain tunneling questions perform as well or better than advanced undergraduate students.

Recommended Citation

Morgan, Jeffrey Todd, "Investigating how Students Think About and Learn Quantum Physics: An Example from Tunneling" (2006). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 524.
http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/524

O'Brien MST: Physics First in Maine

Michael O'Brien
An investigation into the effectiveness of Physics First in Maine
Unpublished MST thesis, May 2006

Data from three high schools that teach physics in ninth grade and three that teach physics in twelfth grade were used to make comparisons between these classes. Research tools include written pre- and post-tests of kinematics and mechanics concepts, a written physics attitudes and expectations survey, and individual student interviews. Portions of these tools were excerpted from wellknown and thoroughly tested instruments. The normalized gains on the conceptual survey were compared, and analyzed to determine which kinematics and mechanics concepts ninth- and twelfth-graders appear to learn differently. Students' perceptions of physics from the ninth- and twelfth-grade viewpoints are also compared. Results suggest that while the populations are similar affectively, they have some significant differences in conceptual understanding, and this difference is amplified by different instructional approaches.

Recommended Citation

O'Brien, Michael James, "An Investigation of the Effectiveness of Physics First in Maine" (2006). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1362.

http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/1362

Traxler MST: Teaching Time in Intro Astro

Adrienne Traxler
"Assessment and Modification of an Introductory Astronomy Laboratory Lesson on Astronomical Time-Keeping"
Unpublished MST thesis, May 2006

The introductory astronomy laboratory course at the University of Maine consists of weekly lessons in which students work in small groups on computer-based exercises. My work consists of assessing and revising a lesson on astronomical time-keeping, including sidereal time, Apparent Solar Time, and time zones. After a baseline of pretest and post-test data was collected, the lesson went through two major revisions. For the spring 2005 semester, the unit was altered to incorporate planetarium software for simulating the sky instead of the physical celestial sphere models previously used. This change produced only small gains from pretest to post-test, so a more drastic change to the lesson was planned. For fall 2005, the entire lesson was rewritten to focus more explicitly on the desired conceptual content and less on intermediary mathematical manipulations. This final iteration of the material was reused in the spring 2006 semester with a new pretest that was updated based on student interviews. Although the fall 2005 data indicated a trend of pretest to post-test improvement with the rewritten lesson, the spring 2006 data do not sustain this trend. Overall, neither the interface change nor the switch to a more inquiry-based style seem to reliably affect student performance on the post-test. I present and discuss these results in detail, including possible explanations for the lack of pre/post-test gain.

Bucy, Thompson, Mountcastle on Entropy

B.R. Bucy, J.R. Thompson, D.B. Mountcastle
What is Entropy? Advanced Undergraduate Performance Comparing Ideal Gas Processes
2005 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, edited by P. Heron, L. McCullough, and J. Marx, AIP Conference Proceedings 818, 77-80 (2006)

Thompson, Bucy, and Mountcastle on partial derivatives in thermo

J.R. Thompson, B.R. Bucy, D.B. Mountcastle
Assessing Student Understanding of Partial Derivatives in Thermodynamics
2005 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, edited by P. Heron, L. McCullough, and J. Marx, AIP Conference Proceedings 818, 77-80 (2006)

Morgan and Wittmann on Quantum Tunneling

J.T. Morgan and M.C. Wittmann
Examining the Evolution of Student Ideas About Quantum Tunneling
in P. Heron, L. McCullough, J. Marx (Eds.) Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings 2005, AIP Conference Proceedings 818, 73-76 (2006).

Wittmann, Morgan, and Bao on energy loss in tunneling

M.C. Wittmann, J.T. Morgan, and L. Bao
Addressing student models of energy loss in quantum tunneling
European Journal of Physics 26, 939–950 (2005)

Sayre MST: Resource activation

E.C. Sayre
Advanced Students' Resource Selection in Nearly-Novel Situations
Unpublished M.S.T. thesis, University of Maine, 2005

To better understand the processes of student learning, one of the primary goals of physics education research, researchers build cognitive models. In this thesis I expand and further detail the resources model, a knowledge-in-pieces model of cognition, through the use of two metaphors, maps and graphs.

Resources may be characterized as to type. Metacognitive resources can mediate and expand problem solving strategies and are in turn mediated by epistemological resources about the subject matter at hand. The four resources types - metacognitive, problem solving, epistemological, and content - are therefore deeply tangled.

Maps and graphs, complementary representations of the resources model, provide organizational structure and illustrate core properties of the model. Maps show which resources are relevant to a given situation. Graphs show how those resources can be connected to each other. Maps and graphs also lend language to the analysis of sense-making in nearly-novel situations.

A nearly-novel situation is one that forces students into an area outside of established conceptions – off the map - but still near many resources. Being near many resources means that students will have many opportunities to build graphs by linking resources together to help make sense of a new situation. Being outside of established conceptions means that students will not already have a pat explanation, and therefore will be forced to make sense on-the-fly.

The physics of diode design is an ideal nearly-novel situation in which to study epistemology and metacognition in upper-level physics students: rich in physics ideas, not mathematically complex, and understudied by the population. Because upper-level physics students are a small population, the statistical approach of data analysis is not used. Instead, data are presented in terms of trends and supporting stories.

Through clinical interviews and an iterative survey, students are first questioned about the functions of diodes in circuits, then asked to design a diode given a charge source. The diode identification question serves a necessary orienting purpose for the subsequent design questions, though it does not predict design capability for this population. Following their design, students are asked a series of demographic and teaching questions intended to both probe their previous studies of diodes and suggest possible effects to consider in a redesign of their diodes. Students may then redesign their diode.

Diode designs followed two basic schemes: true diodes and protodiodes. Nine of twenty-five respondents were incapable of designing diodes. Non- designers usually indicated that they could not remember how to design a diode, despite having never studied diode construction. Epistemologically, these students appear to use knowledge-as-rememberable to the exclusion of knowledge-as-derivable in this context.

We find two constraints on successful reasoning in nearly-novel situations. To see a situation as nearly-novel, students must both be familiar with the necessary material and see that material as relevant to the situation at hand - the material must seem to be cognitively nearby. Furthermore, to reason successfully in a nearly-novel situation, the epistemological resource knowledge-as-derivable must not be blocked from activating.

Sayre, Eleanor C., "Advanced Students' Resource Selection in Nearly-Novel Situations" (2005). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1326.
http://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/etd/1326

Menchen MST: Sound propagation and resonance

K. VP. Menchen
Investigations of Student Understanding of Sound Propagation and Resonance
Unpublished M.S.T. thesis, University of Maine, 2005

This writing discusses the process of determining what students think about the phenomena of sound propagation and resonance using written pretests and interviews and then developing a curriculum based on analysis of student responses. We found that students and teachers alike generally have a difficult time understanding both propagation and resonance, which are foundational in this supposedly “simple science” of sound. The major difficulty that students encounter is their intuition that an object must vibrate only at its natural resonant frequency. Students tend not to put many limits on this rule, and misapply it to all kinds of situations, especially in propagation and resonance. Another common thought that students hold to is that a sound’s frequency will be altered by traveling through various materials. The research revealed many other misconceptions. Sound is a topic generally covered only at elementary school levels, and it is referred to in upper-level courses, as something already well understood to explain ideas pertaining to waves or quantum physics. It is disturbing to observe so many misconceptions in understanding sound, considering the accessibility of this topic.

The curriculum presented here has been developed and informed by these ideas to better help college-level students (mostly education majors) learn by taking into consideration their current understanding of how sound works. We target education majors primarily because they will presumably be passing along this information to the largest audience. The curriculum is used in a guided-inquiry, lab-based course that explores the fundamentals of physics in a hands-on style. My work starts with a preliminary version of curriculum, which has been improved over the past two years to more effectively teach students. The curriculum portions I’ve worked most on have been those that address the effects on the frequency of a sound with respect to resonance and propagation. Specifically, the curriculum has fostered improvements in students’ separation of the ideas of frequency and amplitude; their language when describing the motion of these two concepts; and improved but not flawless understanding of propagation, and how the medium affects the sound passing through. While improvements have been made, there are yet more developments to apply to the sections on propagation, as we continue to understand just what students struggle with.

Odell MST: Conservation of Mass/Energy

Jessica Odell
Student Understanding of Conservation of Mass/Energy in Introductory University Science Courses
Unpublished M.S.T. thesis, August 2005

In the Fall of 2004, student understanding of conservation of energy and mass was measured in four introductory-level science courses (biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics) at the University of Maine. Each course fulfilled one semester of the University’s general science education requirement. A 20 question, multiple-choice survey was administered to students in the four courses, in a pre/post-test format. Ten questions on the survey involved the application of the concepts of conservation of energy and mass in either local or system-wide situations, and were scored to calculate gain.

Sub-groups of students were compiled by taking only those who were taking one science course during the semester. Average normalized gain was calculated for each sub-group to allow for comparison between courses. Students taking the biology course had significant improvement in the systems applications, while students taking the chemistry course showed improvement on the local-level applications. Students enrolled concurrently in biology and chemistry showed significant gains in both subsets of the survey, with an overall gain greater than students enrolled in each of the courses individually. Students enrolled in the physics course showed no significant gains, while earth science students showed significant negative gain on the local applications subset of the survey. The results suggest that there is a difference between the introductory courses that fulfill the University of Maine’s general science education requirement, in terms of improving student understanding of conservation of energy and mass.

Kanim and Thompson on magnetic field viewing cards

S. Kanim, J.R. Thompson
Magnetic Field Viewing Cards
The Physics Teacher, 43:6, 355–359 (2005)