Computation across the curriculum: What skills are needed?

Computation, the use of a computer to solve, simulate, or visualize a physical problem, has revolutionized how physics research is done. Computation is used widely to model systems, to simulate experiments, and to analyze data. Yet, in most undergraduate programs, students have little formal opportunity to engage with computation and, thus, are left to their own to develop their computational expertise. As part of a larger project to study how computation is incorporated in some undergraduate physics programs (and how it might be incorporated further), we convened a mini-conference and conducted a series of interviews with industry professionals, academic faculty, and employed bachelor's graduates who make use of computation in their everyday work. We present preliminary results that speak to how participants developed the requisite skills to do professional computational work and what skills they perceive are necessary to conduct such work.Comment: 4 pages; accepted to 2015 Physics Education Research Conference Proceeding

Identifying features predictive of faculty integrating computation into physics courses

Computation is a central aspect of 21st century physics practice; it is used to model complicated systems, to simulate impossible experiments, and to analyze mountains of data. Physics departments and their faculty are increasingly recognizing the importance of teaching computation to their students. We recently completed a national survey of faculty in physics departments to understand the state of computational instruction and the factors that underlie that instruction. The data collected from the faculty responding to the survey included a variety of scales, binary questions, and numerical responses. We then used Random Forest, a supervised learning technique, to explore the factors that are most predictive of whether a faculty member decides to include computation in their physics courses. We find that experience using computation with students in their research, or lack thereof and various personal beliefs to be most predictive of a faculty member having experience teaching computation. Interestingly, we find demographic and departmental factors to be less useful factors in our model. The results of this study inform future efforts to promote greater integration of computation into the physics curriculum as well as comment on the current state of computational instruction across the United States

On the Prevalence and Nature of Computational Instruction in Undergraduate Physics Programs across the United States

A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The results suggest that more faculty have some form of computational teaching experience than a decade ago, but it appears that this experience does not necessarily translate to computational instruction in undergraduate students' formal course work. Further, we find that formal programs in computational physics are absent from most departments. A majority of faculty do report using computation on homework and in projects, but few report using computation with interactive engagement methods in the classroom or on exams. Specific factors that underlie these results are the subject of future work, but we do find that there is a variation on the reported experience with computation and the highest degree that students can earn at the surveyed institutions.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure