The prevalence of online instruction highlights the importance of videos in education. Pedagogies that include elements that actively engage students are accepted as an improvement over more passive modes of instruction. How can we transfer the advantages of active engagement to instruction via video? Previous research on instructional videos has shown that there are a number of principles, the adherence to which benefit student learning by maximizing productive cognitive processing. To understand the impact of combining such principles we designed and produced four different versions of the same physics demonstration video, varying levels of “visual enhancement” designed around these principles and the amount of active engagement across the different versions. Using pre-post video testing, we compared how much viewers learned across the four different versions. We found that actively engaging students by embedding questions throughout the video increases student learning. We also found that physics videos are most effective when they include enhanced visuals and embedded questions. Notably, it is the combination that matters most; the learning effect from embedding questions is increased when the video also includes enhanced visuals. This study represents an important step towards understanding how instructors can design and refine their videos to maximize student learning.

$\mathrm{LGBT}+$ persons in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have a small growing body of literature addressing their experiences and workplace concerns. This study offers workplace climate analysis of 324 survey respondents in the field of physics. The findings indicate that when building a climate model to predict for consideration to leave and outness, a positive workplace climate was a stronger predictor than a negative workplace climate or experiences of exclusionary behavior. This points to the importance of moving beyond workplace climates that are simply neutral, but to ones that are inclusive and welcoming for $\mathrm{LGBT}+$ physicists. This is the final paper in a series of three.

Collaboration among students is fundamental for knowledge building and competency development. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of student collaboration depends on the extent that these interactions take place under conditions that favor commitment, trust, and decision making among those who interact. The worldwide pandemic due to COVID-19 and the transition to emergency remote teaching have added new challenges for collaboration, mainly because now students’ interactions are wholly mediated by information and communication technologies. This study first explores the effectiveness of different collaborative relationships over performance in physics from a sample of secondary students from two schools located in rural and urban areas in southern Chile (exploratory study). We used social network analysis to map academic hierarchies as in the nominations for proficient peers in physics (i.e., physics prestige), collaboration, and friendship ties. We define a strong association if two students who collaborate shared a friendship tie. Using ordinary least squares multiple linear regression models on physics grades, we found positive effects of collaboration over grades, particularly among students working with friends (strong ties). To test whether the effects of collaboration found in the first study were stable throughout two semesters, the following year we designed a quasiexperiment in four classes from the same urban school in the exploratory study. Here, students attended hybrid school sessions where research participants were either in the classroom or participated remotely. The teacher collected the same social networks described in the first study at the end of semester 1, and two times during semester 2. In addition, we followed the same procedures to identify strong and weak collaboration from the network data on each wave of data collection. After fitting ordinary least squares multiple linear regression models, we found that collaborative variables negatively associated with grades on activity 1 (semester 1), yet at the end of the year (activity 3 in semester 2) having strong working ties became positively associated with physics grades. Interestingly, the relationship of academic hierarchies measured in physics prestige with grades transitions from positive on semester 1 to null by the end of the year. These results contribute to the literature of collaboration in physics education and its effectiveness, by taking into account social relationships and the needed time for developing beneficial collective processes among students in the classroom. We discuss these results and their implications for instructional design and guidelines for constructive group-level processes.

We conducted a multiyear project across three institutions to develop an instructional tutorial that supports student understanding of change of basis in quantum mechanics. Building from our previous work, we identified learning goals to guide activity development. The tutorial makes an analogy between spin-$1/2$ states and a Cartesian coordinate system. This paper details the iterative development process including reports of observations from classroom implementations and the resulting modifications to the activity. Further, we report preliminary findings on the success of the activity in improving students’ ability to correctly change basis and their articulation that change of basis is a choice of representation, not a change to the physical system.

A common task when problem solving in quantum mechanics, including in a spins-first curriculum, involves changing the basis of a given state. Our research in undergraduate quantum mechanics courses at three institutions explores student thinking about basis, basis expansion coefficients, and change of basis in the context of spin-$½$ systems. Our investigation is based on conceptual and computational written questions as well as student reasoning interviews. We identify student ideas about whether and how changing basis affects the state, examine how students perceive notation as indicative of choice of basis, explore students’ interpretations of the structure and meaning of a basis expansion, and identify the range of methods students employ when changing basis. For instance, we find a recurring idea that changing basis alters the physical system, and observe that some students chose to relabel the ket representing a quantum state vector after changing basis. Together, these results paint a broad, qualitative picture of a variety of ways that students grapple with basis and change of basis, with potential implications for instruction.

Self-efficacy has emerged as one of the most important noncognitive variables explaining academic behavior. It has been shown to influence students’ academic and career decisions as well as their academic performance. Multiple studies have reported differences in self-efficacy between men and women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics classes. A student’s personality, characterized by the five-factor model, is also related to academic performance; some personality facets are substantially different for men and women. This work examines the relations among the five-factor model of personality (agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness), self-efficacy toward physics and mathematics, and course outcomes in university physics and mathematics classes. Women reported significantly higher neuroticism in all classes, a medium to large effect size, and significantly higher conscientiousness in Calculus 1 and Physics 1, small effects. Men reported higher self-efficacy in two-semester Calculus 1, one-semester Calculus 1, Physics 1, and Physics 2, small effects. Conscientiousness and neuroticism had competing mediational effects on the relation of gender to self-efficacy. The path through neuroticism accounted for 25%–47% of the total effect of gender on self-efficacy (increasing self-efficacy for men) and the path through conscientiousness accounted for 12%–23% of the total effect (increasing self-efficacy for women). Self-efficacy mediated the relation of conscientiousness to course grade in all classes, accounting for 30%–45% of the total effect.

We investigated students’ physics motivational beliefs including their physics self-efficacy, interest, perceived recognition, and identity in a traditionally taught two-semester college calculus-based introductory physics sequence (referred to as physics 1 and physics 2). We studied whether and how these motivational beliefs evolve in this course sequence in terms of the average scores and the predictive relationships among them. The results show that both female and male students’ physics self-efficacy and interest decreased from physics 1 to physics 2, while there was no statistically significant change in students’ perceived recognition and identity. We found signatures of an inequitable and noninclusive learning environment in that not only was there a gender difference in students’ motivational beliefs disadvantaging women, but the gender difference in perceived recognition increased from physics 1 to physics 2. We used structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate the predictive relationships among students’ motivational beliefs in physics 1 and physics 2. Analysis revealed that perceived recognition from others, e.g., instructors and teaching assistants, was the largest predictor of physics identity in both courses, and the role played by perceived recognition was even more important in physics 2 for predicting identity and mediating the gender difference in self-efficacy. Our findings suggest that perceived recognition is very important for the development of students’ physics identity in both physics 1 and 2. However, female students feel less recognized in the current learning environment and this gender difference grows from physics 1 to physics 2. Instructors should be trained to create an equitable and inclusive learning environment, in which all students feel recognized and supported appropriately and develop a stronger physics self-efficacy, interest, and identity.

Surveys have long been used in physics education research to understand student reasoning and inform course improvements. However, to make analysis of large sets of responses practical, most surveys use a closed-response format with a small set of potential responses. Open-ended formats, such as written free response, can provide deeper insights into student thinking, but take much longer to analyze, especially with a large number of responses. Here, we explore natural language processing as a computational solution to this problem. We create a machine learning model that can take student responses from the Physics Measurement Questionnaire as input, and output a categorization of student reasoning based on different reasoning paradigms. Our model yields classifications with the same level of agreement as that between two humans categorizing the data, but can be done by a computer, and thus can be scaled for large datasets. In this work, we describe the algorithms and methodologies used to create, train, and test our natural language processing system. We also present the results of the analysis and discuss the utility of these approaches for analyzing open-response data in education research.

This study aimed at analyzing the impact of problem-based learning (PBL) in improving physics students’ conceptual understanding of mechanical waves. This study used a quasiexperimental, pretest–post-test control group design with PBL instruction as a teaching intervention. The participants of this study were 239 physics students from 19 secondary schools in Western Uganda. We analyzed data with SPSS v.23.0 using repeated two-way analysis of variance tests. We found that unlike the superposition of mechanical waves concepts, PBL effectively improves students’ understanding of propagation, reflection, and standing waves more than the usual or traditional teaching method. Teachers were recommended to teach with PBL to assess students’ difficulties to remedy them and uplift their understanding.

Student sense of belonging in physics classes may not only play a key role in shaping course outcomes but also influence student persistence and future career aspirations. Prior research has shown that women have a lower sense of belonging than men in calculus-based introductory physics courses. However, prior research has generally not investigated students’ sense of belonging in introductory physics courses in which women are not underrepresented. We administered a validated survey to investigate the sense of belonging of 814 students and how it predicts student grades in a mandatory introductory physics course primarily for bioscience majors. In particular, we investigated how students’ sense of belonging predicts female and male students’ grade at the end of the mandatory physics course for bioscience majors using structural equation modeling. We found that women had a lower sense of belonging and grade than men in this course and that the students’ sense of belonging played a major role in predicting students’ grade in the course. In addition, while men’s sense of belonging significantly increased from the beginning to the end of the physics course, women’s sense of belonging did not significantly change by the end of the course.

Student motivational beliefs in introductory physics courses can influence their course outcomes as well as their retention in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines and future career aspirations. Prior research has shown that students’ perceived recognition by others as a physics person is important in predicting their physics identity and career choices. This study used validated survey data from 827 students in the first of two college algebra-based introductory physics courses primarily taken by bioscience majors, in which women make up approximately 67% of the class. We investigated how the students’ perceived recognition by instructors and teaching assistants (TAs) as a physics person predicts their grade at the end of a mandatory physics course for bioscience majors in which women are not outnumbered by men. We found that overall women had lower perceived recognition than men as a physics person and their perceived recognition played an important role in predicting course grades controlling for high school GPA and math SAT scores. Since physics as a discipline presents a barrier to women due to deep-rooted societal stereotypes and biases about who can excel in it, the numerical representation of women alone in these courses does not imply that they will feel recognized by their instructors and TAs as a physics person without an intentional effort to make the learning environment equitable and inclusive. These findings suggest that physics instructors and TAs should focus on changing the culture in their physics classes and create an equitable and inclusive learning environment in which students from traditionally marginalized demographic groups, e.g., women, feel recognized, and can excel.

Inquiry practices can be integrated into various settings that differ in terms of their constraints and hence in the scope and depth of the practices that students experience. Key policy papers suggest implementing a gradual learning sequence for inquiry practices so that students’ learning experiences in more constrained settings can serve them later in extended research projects. What type of learning progression in inquiry is valued by students? To answer this question, students’ views were examined while progressing from inquiry-oriented instructional labs to an extended research project. This was done in the context of the Research Physics program, a three-year program consisting of an introductory stage followed by a long-term ($\sim 18$ months) research project. The group administered interactive questionnaire methodology was used to collect student reflections at the interface between the two stages of the program, both individually and in groups. Students were asked to identify inquiry practices they had encountered during the introductory stage and to evaluate their contribution to their projects. Findings showed that while students perceived the development of measurement, analysis, and self-monitoring skills as useful in preparing them for future research projects, this was not the case for the practices of teamwork and communication of knowledge. We explain these findings, using the boundary crossing theoretical lens, by looking at the different meanings these two practices take on when imported from the physicist’s lab to the educational lab and suggest that this impedes the cultural boundary crossing between these two settings.

Self-explanation, a learning strategy where students explain to themselves the steps taken in a worked example, is an effective learning strategy in early cognitive skill acquisition. However, many physics students produce self-explanations of low quality. There is also a lack of guidelines for what students should seek to explain when studying worked examples. Therefore, the overarching purpose of this article is to investigate how we can improve students’ self-explanations of worked examples. We pursue the following two general research questions: (1) What knowledge representations should students seek while self-explaining worked examples to maximize their learning? (2) Can retrieval practice of physics principles and their conditions of application potentiate students’ learning from self-explaining worked examples? In two studies ($n=18$ and $N=54$), we qualitatively categorized and quantified the students’ written self-explanations. Our results indicate that to produce useful knowledge, self-explanations of the physics model in worked examples should explain what principle is used, how the principle is set up, and how the conditions of application are met for the principle, while explanations of the mathematical procedures should contain action descriptions, goals, and conditions ($r=0.30$–0.50). Through a quasiexperimental ($N=57$) and an experimental ($N=54$) test, we found evidence that retrieval practice of physics principles and their conditions of application before self-explanation can have a medium-sized effect on post-test problem-solving scores and that it can increase the quality of students’ self-explanations. Using retrieval practice to potentiate learning from more complex learning strategies is a novel and promising approach to improve physics students’ learning.

There is a large variety of goals instructors have for laboratory courses, with different courses focusing on different subsets of goals. An often implicit, but crucial, goal is to develop students’ attitudes, views, and expectations about experimental physics to align with practicing experimental physicists. The assessment of laboratory courses upon this one dimension of learning has been intensively studied in U.S. institutions using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). However, there is no such an instrument available to use in Germany, and the influence of laboratory courses on students views about the nature of experimental physics is still unexplored at German-speaking institutions. Motivated by the lack of an assessment tool to investigate this goal in laboratory courses at German-speaking institutions, we present a translated version of the E-CLASS adapted to the context at German-speaking institutions. We call the German version of the E-CLASS, the GE-CLASS. We describe the translation process and the creation of an automated web-based system for instructors to assess their laboratory courses. We also present first results using GE-CLASS obtained at the University of Potsdam. A first comparison between E-CLASS and GE-CLASS results shows clear differences between University of Potsdam and U.S. students’ views and beliefs about experimental physics.

In science education, it is vital for teachers to consider students’ academic and emotional needs. Teachers’ prediction of students’ learning states has been commonly regarded as an indicator to measure that competence to understand students. This study aimed to explore the outcome and the process of prediction to reflect teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. The study was to detect the differences in preservice teachers’ eye movement behaviors with eye-tracking technology between the prediction group and nonprediction group. The prediction group predicted the option students will most likely choose for a given question, while the nonprediction group solved the problems on their own. The result showed that preservice teachers in the prediction group were more considerate of students’ ideas and review the information among different areas of interest when they were required to detect the problem from the perspective of students. In the prediction group, preservice teachers with positive prediction focused more on the correct option repeatedly, while those with negative prediction tended to inspect carefully within each incorrect option. In addition, successful and unsuccessful problem solvers in the nonprediction group responded to problems in a different manner, in which successful problem solvers paid more attention to inspecting information from options, including both correct option and incorrect options.

Several recent studies have employed item response theory (IRT) to rank incorrect responses to commonly used research-based multiple-choice assessments. These studies use Bock’s nominal response model (NRM) for applying IRT to categorical (nondichotomous) data, but the response rankings only utilize half of the parameters estimated by the model. We present a mathematical argument for why this practice of using half of the NRM parameters when ranking responses is appropriate based on the primary question of multiple-choice tests: How can we use students’ responses to test items to estimate their overall knowledge levels? We provide additional motivation for this practice by recognizing the similarities between Bock’s NRM and the probability function of the canonical ensemble with degenerate energy states. As physicists often do, we exploit these mathematical similarities to gain new insights into the meaning of the IRT parameters and a richer understanding of the relationship between these parameters and student knowledge.

This study describes a psychometric evaluation of high school student responses to the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS), and the subsequent development of a more parsimonious attitudes and beliefs survey structure for potential use with K-12 students in physics courses aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. Pre- and postsurvey response data were obtained from high school students in the 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 school years, whose instructors were partnered with the Physics through Evidence: Empowerment through Reasoning project. Exploratory factor analysis methods were used to propose a physics attitudes and beliefs survey with a more parsimonious factor structure, and confirmatory factor analysis methods provide support for the survey’s structural stability. These preliminary results suggest that the CLASS is fertile ground for the development of shorter attitudes and beliefs surveys that may be more easily implemented and interpreted by instructors in K-12 contexts. Replication analyses and potential uses of the more parsimonious survey structure are also discussed.

A central goal of introductory physics for the life sciences (IPLS) is to prepare students to use physics to model and analyze biological situations, a skill of increasing importance for their future studies and careers. Here we report our findings on life science students’ ability to carry out a sophisticated biological modeling task at the end of first-semester introductory physics. Some students were enrolled in a standard course ($N=34$), and some in an IPLS course ($N=61$); both courses were taught with active learning, used calculus, and included the same core physics concepts. Compared to those who took the standard course, we found that the IPLS students were significantly more successful at building a model that combined ideas in a manner they had not previously seen, and at making complex decisions about how to apply an equation to a particular physical situation, although both groups displayed similar success at solving simpler problems. Both groups identified and applied simple models that they had previously used in very similar contexts, and executed straightforward calculations, at statistically indistinguishable rates. We report both our findings and the rationale behind the development of the task, in the hopes that others may find this task either a valuable tool or a starting point to develop other such tasks. Further study is needed to determine the basis for the IPLS students’ stronger performance—namely, what aspects of the IPLS course support these students to be better prepared to do such modeling—as well as whether biological settings are important for IPLS students to succeed in flexible model building, and whether the ability to employ models flexibly persists over time.

We investigated to what extent secondary school students have insight in the apparent motion of the Sun and stars (AMoSS). We used the AMoSS test instrument, which focuses on distinctions between different aspects of the apparent motion of the Sun and stars. It consists of 12 multiple-choice questions accompanied by explanations. We administered the test to students of the fifth year (16–17 years old) of six Belgian secondary schools ($N=410$) during a science lesson in school and asked them to explain their choices. We found that, despite instruction, most students only demonstrate a rudimentary understanding of the apparent motion of the Sun and stars for different times during the day, different times during the year, and different locations of the observer. Moreover, we see a clear distinction between the responses to the questions about the Sun and stars. Thanks to the classification system that we developed to categorize the written explanations and a latent class analysis, we are able to identify different mental models that students use to answer questions about the apparent motion of the Sun and stars.

Over the last decade, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been recognized as a way to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education by engaging students in authentic discovery. CUREs have been shown to have positive benefits similar to traditional undergraduate research experiences; however, they can reach a larger number of students and are open to all students who enroll in the course. Motivated by the need to redesign the large introductory physics lab at The University of Colorado–Boulder to be fully remote in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we designed and implemented the first remote, large-enrollment, physics CURE. Here, we detail the motivations and the challenges when designing the course, and provide detailed descriptions of the course components. Throughout the course, we collected course artifacts and administered surveys to the students. Based on these data sources, we find that this course helped students gain research skills and coding confidence, engage in productive and enjoyable teamwork experiences, and feel motivated and interested in experimental physics research.