Gender-grade-gap zeroed out under a specific intro-physics assessment regime

Evidence is presented that offering introductory physics courses with an explicit focus on mastery can reduce the gender gap to zero. Taken together with a previous study showing that a concepts-first course may zero out another demographic gap leads one to speculate that demographic grade gaps in introductory physics are just artifacts of the design of the courses and that none of these classes/grades should be assumed to be demographically neutral

Magnetic field evolution of white dwarfs in strongly interacting binary star systems

The surface magnetic field strength of white dwarfs is observed to vary from very little to around 10^9 G. Here we examine the proposal that the strongest fields are generated by dynamo action during the common envelope phase of strongly interacting stars that leads to binary systems containing at least one white dwarf. The resulting magnetic field depends strongly on the electrical conductivity of the white dwarf, the lifetime of the convective envelope and the variability of the magnetic dynamo. We assess the various energy sources available and estimate necessary lifetimes of the common envelope. In the case of a dynamo that leads a randomly oriented magnetic field we find that the induced field is confined to a thin boundary layer at the surface of the white dwarf. This then decays away rapidly upon dispersal of the common envelope. The residual field is typically less than 10^-8 times the strength of the external field. Only in the case where there is some preferential direction to the dynamo-generated field can an induced field, that avoids rapid decay, be produced. We show that a surface field of magnitude a few per cent of the external field may be produced after a few Myr. In this case the residual field strength is roughly proportional to the lifetime of the dynamo activity.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Sixteen years of Collaborative Learning through Active Sense-making in Physics (CLASP) at UC Davis

This paper describes our large reformed introductory physics course at UC Davis, which bioscience students have been taking since 1996. The central feature of this course is a focus on sense-making by the students during the five hours per week discussion/labs in which the students take part in activities emphasizing peer-peer discussions, argumentation, and presentations of ideas. The course differs in many fundamental ways from traditionally taught introductory physics courses. After discussing the unique features of CLASP and its implementation at UC Davis, various student outcome measures are presented showing increased performance by students who took the CLASP course compared to students who took a traditionally taught introductory physics course. Measures we use include upper-division GPAs, MCAT scores, FCI gains, and MPEX-II scores.Comment: Also submitted to American Journal of Physic

Trapping \u3ci\u3ePhyllophaga \u3c/i\u3espp. (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) in the United States and Canada using sex attractants.

The sex pheromone of the scarab beetle, Phyllophaga anxia, is a blend of the methyl esters of two amino acids, L-valine and L-isoleucine. A field trapping study was conducted, deploying different blends of the two compounds at 59 locations in the United States and Canada. More than 57,000 males of 61 Phyllophaga species (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae: Melolonthinae) were captured and identified. Three major findings included: (1) widespread use of the two compounds [of the 147 Phyllophaga (sensu stricto) species found in the United States and Canada, males of nearly 40% were captured]; (2) in most species intraspecific male response to the pheromone blends was stable between years and over geography; and (3) an unusual pheromone polymorphism was described from P. anxia. Populations at some locations were captured with L-valine methyl ester alone, whereas populations at other locations were captured with L-isoleucine methyl ester alone. At additional locations, the L-valine methyl ester-responding populations and the L-isoleucine methyl ester-responding populations were both present, producing a bimodal capture curve. In southeastern Massachusetts and in Rhode Island, in the United States, P. anxia males were captured with blends of L-valine methyl ester and L-isoleucine methyl ester

Keynote Address

Greetings and Introduction Judith Eisen, JD (Hofstra Law, ’86) Partner/Director, Garfunkel Wild, P.C. Moderator Andrew Yacht, MD Chief Academic Officer, North Shore-LIJ Health System Wendell Potter President, Wendell Potter Consultin

Rotating Sample Proton Spin Refrigerators

150 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1970.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Grading by Response Category: A simple method for providing students with meaningful feedback on exams in large courses

As instructors, we want our students to develop a deep understanding of course material, and feedback is essential in their sense-making process. Providing effective individualized feedback to students in large courses is especially difficult. While researcherssuggest,1 and many instructors of large courses are,2,3incorporating interactive techniques that allow peer feedback, studies have shown that it\u27s important for students to also have direct feedback from the instructor.4 Since the requirement for individualized feedback is difficult to meet during class time in large courses, providing effective feedback on exams and quizzes takes on added importance. Some instructors choose to assess their students using open-ended written exam items that require students to demonstrate their understanding of physics by solving a problem and/or explaining a concept. Because grading these items can be time consuming, the challenge is to develop an approach to grading and provision of feedback that is both efficient and effective. This paper describes Grading by Response Category (GRC), an effective approach to evaluating assessments that provides feedback to students, improving the learning process for both students and teachers by encouraging students to reflect on their thinking and giving instructors information on student difficulties. GRC is a method of grading quizzes and exams utilizing good feedback practices that is especially suited for large courses because it can be done within a time period similar to traditional grading. As we describe the GRC process, we examine the benefits of the GRC method in the context of Carol Evans\u27s recent review article and resulting “Principles of Effective Assessment and Feedback”5 (Table I). When we describe a feature of GRC that aligns with Evans\u27s findings, we indicate the principle it exemplifies by its number listed in Table I. Finally, we provide an example of the GRC feedback provided to students and discuss student reception of the GRC process. Table I. This table includes a partial list of the “Principles of Effective Assessment and Feedback” from Evans 2013. Evans organized the principles into “themes” as indicated by the letters a-e. For the sake of brevity we chose not to define those themes, and instead we label each principle in the theme with a Roman numeral that refers to the order in which it is listed in the Evans paper. Table I. This table includes a partial list of the “Principles of Effective Assessment and Feedback” from Evans 2013. Evans organized the principles into “themes” as indicated by the letters a-e. For the sake of brevity we chose not to define those themes, and instead we label each principle in the theme with a Roman numeral that refers to the order in which it is listed in the Evans paper. a-ii Methods of assessment and feedback are constructively aligned with learning objectives. a-vi Feedback informs the process of learning, encourages reflection, and focuses on the self-regulation level. Guidance is explicit in relation to requirements of the b-i assessment and what quality is. It demystifies the assessment process through use of exemplars, modeling aspects of good practice, clarifying assessment criteria, and giving clear signals about good practices. Feedback enables development of self-assessment skills. Feedback is not so detailed and specific that it scaffolds the learning so completely that the students do not think d-ii for themselves. Feedback is accessible to the learner, for example, provided in conjunction with the learner having sufficient knowledge of how to be able to use feedback effectively. e-i Feedback is appropriate to the purpose of the assessment task and level of student understanding. Feedback focuses on the specific features of the task. It e-ii focuses on the what, how, and why of a problem rather than simply indicating to students whether work is correct or not. e-iii Feedback focuses on performance. Feedback provides suggestions on how to improve rather e-iv than focuses on the personal attributes of the learner. e-v Feedback identifies actions including strategies to enable the student to improve. e-vi Feedback involves an equitable dialogue between student and tutor to clarify meanings, expectations, misconceptions, and future actions. e-vii Feedback encourages positive motivational beliefs, self-esteem, and trust. The GRC method was developed at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) for use in 300+ student active-engagement introductory physics courses.2 It has been in use for over 15 years, and is currently being used by dozens of instructors at UC Davis and other institutions. GRC is used to assess exam items that require students to reveal their thinking, often by drawing diagrams or writing explanations, as well as those requiring calculations. Once student quizzes or exams are collected, an instructor follows the steps outlined below to implement the GRC method

Variation of instructor-student interactions in an introductory interactive physics course

The physics instruction at UC Davis for life science majors takes place in a long-standing reformed large-enrollment physics course in which the discussion or laboratory instructors (primarily graduate student teaching assistants) implement the interactive-engagement (IE) elements of the course. Because so many different instructors participate in disseminating the IE course elements, we find it essential to the instructors’ professional development to observe and document the student-instructor interactions within the classroom. Out of this effort, we have developed a computerized real-time instructor observation tool (RIOT) to take data of student-instructor interactions. We use the RIOT to observe 29 different instructors for 5 hours each over the course of one quarter, for a total of about 150 hours of class time, finding that the range of instructor behaviors is more extreme than previously assumed. In this paper, we introduce RIOT and describe how the variation present across 29 different instructors can provide students in the same course with significantly different course experiences

Equity of success in CLASP courses at UC Davis

We have recently described the reformed introductory physics course, Collaborative Learning through Active Sense-Making in Physics (CLASP), for bioscience students at UC Davis and argued that the course was more successful than its predecessor (Physics 5) by several measures. Now we examine the effects of these courses for different student ethnic groups. We find that, compared to Physics 5, students of most ethnic backgrounds were more successful in CLASP. We also find that students from ethnic groups underrepresented in STEM who took the CLASP course were more likely to graduate as STEM majors. We discuss possible features of CLASP that might explain these results