62 research outputs found
Developing the Next Generation of Physics Assessments
Science education at all levels is currently undergoing dramatic changes to
its curricula and developing assessments for these new curricula is paramount.
We have used the basis of many of these new changes (scientific practices,
crosscutting concepts, and core ideas) to develop sets of criteria that can be
used to guide assessment development for this new curriculum. We present a case
study that uses the criteria we have developed to revise a traditional physics
assessment item into an assessment item that is much more aligned with the
goals of current transformation efforts. Assessment items developed using this
criteria can be used to assess student learning of both the concepts and
process of science.Comment: Revised version for PERC 2015 Conference Proceeding
Student and AI responses to physics problems examined through the lenses of sensemaking and mechanistic reasoning
Several reports in education have called for transforming physics learning
environments by promoting sensemaking of real-world scenarios in light of
curricular ideas. Recent advancements in Generative-Artificial Intelligence has
garnered increasing traction in educators' community by virtue of its potential
in transforming STEM learning. In this exploratory study, we adopt a
mixed-methods approach in comparatively examining student- and AI-generated
responses to two different formats of a physics problem through the cognitive
lenses of sensemaking and mechanistic reasoning. The student data is derived
from think-aloud interviews of introductory students and the AI data comes from
ChatGPT's solutions collected using Zero shot approach. The results highlight
AI responses to evidence most features of the two processes through
well-structured solutions and student responses to effectively leverage
representations in their solutions through iterative refinement of arguments.
In other words, while AI responses reflect how physics is talked about, the
student responses reflect how physics is practiced. Implications of these
results in light of development and deployment of AI systems in physics
pedagogy are discussed
The Effect of Value-Focused Discussions on Scientists' Ethical Decision Making
Many scientists view science as value-free, despite the fact that both
epistemic and non-epistemic values structure scientific inquiry. Current ethics
training usually focuses on transmitting knowledge about high-level ethical
concepts or rules and is widely regarded as ineffective. We argue that ethics
training will be more effective at improving ethical decision making if it
focuses on connecting values to science. We pull from philosophy and psychology
to define ethical decision making using the Four Component Model. This model
states that in order to make an ethical decision someone must consider four
components: moral sensitivity, moral reasoning, moral motivation, and moral
implementation. We formed a moderated fellowship of fourteen science faculty
from different disciplines who met for ten sessions over the course of a year,
where they discussed the values embedded in different scientific norms. We then
conducted interviews before and after the year-long fellowship that involved
guided reflection of scenarios where there was some kind of ethical misconduct
where the scientific practice required value judgements (e.g using unpublished
data in their own work). We looked at how the fellowship affected the
scientists' ability to recognize ethical dimensions regarding the scenarios. We
found that this fellowship improved moral sensitivity, but their moral
reasoning does not improve. We outlined our approach on how to look at
scientists' ethical decision making and made recommendations on how to improve
our approach. This work can inform future ethical training to align better with
what scientists value and introduce useful concepts from philosophy and
psychology to education research in physics
Characterizing College Science Assessments: The Three-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol
Citation: Laverty, J. T., Underwood, S. M., Matz, R. L., Posey, L. A., Carmel, J. H., Caballero, M. D., . . . Cooper, M. M. (2016). Characterizing College Science Assessments: The Three-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol. Plos One, 11(9), 21. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0162333Many calls to improve science education in college and university settings have focused on improving instructor pedagogy. Meanwhile, science education at the K-12 level is undergoing significant changes as a result of the emphasis on scientific and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. This framework of "three-dimensional learning" is based on the literature about how people learn science and how we can help students put their knowledge to use. Recently, similar changes are underway in higher education by incorporating three-dimensional learning into college science courses. As these transformations move forward, it will become important to assess three-dimensional learning both to align assessments with the learning environment, and to assess the extent of the transformations. In this paper we introduce the Three-Dimensional Learning Assessment Protocol (3D-LAP), which is designed to characterize and support the development of assessment tasks in biology, chemistry, and physics that align with transformation efforts. We describe the development process used by our interdisciplinary team, discuss the validity and reliability of the protocol, and provide evidence that the protocol can distinguish between assessments that have the potential to elicit evidence of three-dimensional learning and those that do not
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