442 research outputs found
Reinventing College Physics for Biologists: Explicating an epistemological curriculum
The University of Maryland Physics Education Research Group (UMd-PERG)
carried out a five-year research project to rethink, observe, and reform
introductory algebra-based (college) physics. This class is one of the Maryland
Physics Department's large service courses, serving primarily life-science
majors. After consultation with biologists, we re-focused the class on helping
the students learn to think scientifically -- to build coherence, think in
terms of mechanism, and to follow the implications of assumptions. We designed
the course to tap into students' productive conceptual and epistemological
resources, based on a theoretical framework from research on learning. The
reformed class retains its traditional structure in terms of time and
instructional personnel, but we modified existing best-practices curricular
materials, including Peer Instruction, Interactive Lecture Demonstrations, and
Tutorials. We provided class-controlled spaces for student collaboration, which
allowed us to observe and record students learning directly. We also scanned
all written homework and examinations, and we administered pre-post conceptual
and epistemological surveys. The reformed class enhanced the strong gains on
pre-post conceptual tests produced by the best-practices materials while
obtaining unprecedented pre-post gains on epistemological surveys instead of
the traditional losses.Comment: 35 pages including a 15 page appendix of supplementary material
Symbolic Manipulators Affect Mathematical Mindsets
Symbolic calculators like Mathematica are becoming more commonplace among
upper level physics students. The presence of such a powerful calculator can
couple strongly to the type of mathematical reasoning students employ. It does
not merely offer a convenient way to perform the computations students would
have otherwise wanted to do by hand. This paper presents examples from the work
of upper level physics majors where Mathematica plays an active role in
focusing and sustaining their thought around calculation. These students still
engage in powerful mathematical reasoning while they calculate but struggle
because of the narrowed breadth of their thinking. Their reasoning is drawn
into local attractors where they look to calculation schemes to resolve
questions instead of, for example, mapping the mathematics to the physical
system at hand. We model the influence of Mathematica as an integral part of
the constant feedback that occurs in how students frame, and hence focus, their
work
Epistemic Complexity and the Journeyman-Expert Transition
Physics students can encounter difficulties in physics problem solving as a
result of failing to use knowledge that they have but do not perceive as
relevant or appropriate. In previous work the authors have demonstrated that
some of these difficulties may be epistemological. Students may limit the kinds
of knowledge that they use. For example, they may use formal manipulations and
ignore physical sense making or vice versa. Both beginning (novice) and
intermediate (journeymen) students demonstrate these difficulties. Learning
both to switch one's epistemological lens on a problem and to integrate
different kinds of knowledge is a critical component of learning to solve
problems in physics effectively. In this paper, we present two case studies in
which journeyman students (upper-division physics majors) demonstrate switching
between epistemological resources in approaching a complex problem. We
conjecture that mastering these epistemological skills is an essential
component of learning complex problem solving in physics.Comment: 12 page
Understanding and Affecting Student Reasoning About Sound Waves
Student learning of sound waves can be helped through the creation of
group-learning classroom materials whose development and design rely on
explicit investigations into student understanding. We describe reasoning in
terms of sets of resources, i.e. grouped building blocks of thinking that are
commonly used in many different settings. Students in our university physics
classes often used sets of resources that were different from the ones we wish
them to use. By designing curriculum materials that ask students to think about
the physics from a different view, we bring about improvement in student
understanding of sound waves. Our curriculum modifications are specific to our
own classes, but our description of student learning is more generally useful
for teachers. We describe how students can use multiple sets of resources in
their thinking, and raise questions that should be considered by both
instructors and researchers.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, 28 references, 7 notes. Accepted for
publication in the International Journal of Science Educatio
Learning physics in context: a study of student learning about electricity and magnetism
This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus
on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of
context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel
university class in electricity and magnetism are analyzed to demonstrate the
central and inextricable role of context in student learning. This work sits
within a broader effort to create and analyze environments which support
student learning in the sciencesComment: 36 pages, 4 Figure
Analyzing Problem Solving Using Math in Physics: Epistemological Framing via Warrants
Developing expertise in physics entails learning to use mathematics
effectively and efficiently as applied to the context of physical situations.
Doing so involves coordinating a variety of concepts and skills including
mathematical processing, computation, blending ancillary information with the
math, and reading out physical implications from the math and vice versa. From
videotaped observations of intermediate level students solving problems in
groups, we note that students often "get stuck" using a limited group of skills
or reasoning and fail to notice that a different set of tools (which they
possess and know how to use effectively) could quickly and easily solve their
problem. We refer to a student's perception/judgment of the kind of knowledge
that is appropriate to bring to bear in a particular situation as
epistemological framing. Although epistemological framing is often unstated
(and even unconscious), in group problem solving situations students sometimes
get into disagreements about how to progress. During these disagreements, they
bring forth explicit reasons or warrants in support of their point of view. For
the context of mathematics use in physics problem solving, we present a system
for classifying physics students' warrants. This warrant analysis offers
tangible evidence of their epistemological framing.Comment: 23 page
Bandit Models of Human Behavior: Reward Processing in Mental Disorders
Drawing an inspiration from behavioral studies of human decision making, we
propose here a general parametric framework for multi-armed bandit problem,
which extends the standard Thompson Sampling approach to incorporate reward
processing biases associated with several neurological and psychiatric
conditions, including Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases,
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), addiction, and chronic pain.
We demonstrate empirically that the proposed parametric approach can often
outperform the baseline Thompson Sampling on a variety of datasets. Moreover,
from the behavioral modeling perspective, our parametric framework can be
viewed as a first step towards a unifying computational model capturing reward
processing abnormalities across multiple mental conditions.Comment: Conference on Artificial General Intelligence, AGI-1
Can dual processing theory explain physics students' performance on the Force Concept Inventory?
According to dual processing theory there are two types, or modes, of thinking: system 1, which involves intuitive and nonreflective thinking, and system 2, which is more deliberate and requires conscious effort and thought. The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a widely used and robust three item instrument that measures the tendency to override system 1 thinking and to engage in reflective, system 2 thinking. Each item on the CRT has an intuitive (but wrong) answer that must be rejected in order to answer the item correctly. We therefore hypothesized that performance on the CRT may give useful insights into the cognitive processes involved in learning physics, where success involves rejecting the common, intuitive ideas about the world (often called misconceptions) and instead carefully applying physical concepts. This paper presents initial results from an ongoing study examining the relationship between studentsâ CRT scores and their performance on the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), which tests studentsâ understanding of Newtonian mechanics. We find that a higher CRT score predicts a higher FCI score for both precourse and postcourse tests. However, we also find that the FCI normalized gain is independent of CRT score. The implications of these results are discussed
Beyond deficit-based models of learners' cognition: Interpreting engineering students' difficulties with sense-making in terms of fine-grained epistemological and conceptual dynamics
Researchers have argued against deficit-based explanations of students'
troubles with mathematical sense-making, pointing instead to factors such as
epistemology: students' beliefs about knowledge and learning can hinder them
from activating and integrating productive knowledge they have. In this case
study of an engineering major solving problems (about content from his
introductory physics course) during a clinical interview, we show that "Jim"
has all the mathematical and conceptual knowledge he would need to solve a
hydrostatic pressure problem that we posed to him. But he reaches and sticks
with an incorrect answer that violates common sense. We argue that his lack of
mathematical sense-making-specifically, translating and reconciling between
mathematical and everyday/common-sense reasoning-stems in part from his
epistemological views, i.e., his views about the nature of knowledge and
learning. He regards mathematical equations as much more trustworthy than
everyday reasoning, and he does not view mathematical equations as expressing
meaning that tractably connects to common sense. For these reasons, he does not
view reconciling between common sense and mathematical formalism as either
necessary or plausible to accomplish. We, however, avoid a potential "deficit
trap"-substituting an epistemological deficit for a concepts/skills deficit-by
incorporating multiple, context-dependent epistemological stances into Jim's
cognitive dynamics. We argue that Jim's epistemological stance contains
productive seeds that instructors could build upon to support Jim's
mathematical sense-making: He does see common-sense as connected to formalism
(though not always tractably so) and in some circumstances this connection is
both salient and valued.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of Engineering Educatio
Integrating Early Results on Ventral Striatal Gamma Oscillations in the Rat
A vast literature implicates the ventral striatum in the processing of reward-related information and in mediating the impact of such information on behavior. It is characterized by heterogeneity at the local circuit, connectivity, and functional levels. A tool for dissecting this complex structure that has received relatively little attention until recently is the analysis of ventral striatal local field potential oscillations, which are more prominent in the gamma band compared to the dorsal striatum. Here we review recent results on gamma oscillations recorded from freely moving rats. Ventral striatal gamma separates into distinct frequency bands (gamma-50 and gamma-80) with distinct behavioral correlates, relationships to different inputs, and separate populations of phase-locked putative fast-spiking interneurons. Fast switching between gamma-50 and gamma-80 occurs spontaneously but is influenced by reward delivery as well as the application of dopaminergic drugs. These results provide novel insights into ventral striatal processing and highlight the importance of considering fast-timescale dynamics of ventral striatal activity
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