Developing skills versus reinforcing concepts in physics labs: Insight from a survey of students’ beliefs about experimental physics

Abstract

Physics laboratory courses have been generally acknowledged as an important component of the undergraduate curriculum, particularly with respect to developing students' interest in, and understanding of, experimental physics. There are a number of possible learning goals for these courses including reinforcing physics concepts, developing laboratory skills, and promoting expert-like beliefs about the nature of experimental physics. However, there is little consensus among instructors and researchers interested in the laboratory learning environment as to relative importance of these various learning goals. Here, we contribute data to this debate through the analysis of students' responses to the laboratory-focused assessment known as the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). Using a large, national data set of students' responses, we compare students' E-CLASS performance in classes in which the instructor self-reported focusing on developing skills, reinforcing concepts, or both. As the classification of courses was based on instructor self-report, we also provide additional description of these course with respect to how often students engage in particular activities in the lab. We find that courses that focus specifically on developing lab skills have more expert-like postinstruction E-CLASS responses than courses that focus either on reinforcing physics concepts or on both goals. Within first-year courses, this effect is larger for women. Moreover, these findings hold when controlling for the variance in postinstruction scores that is associated with preinstruction E-CLASS score, student major, and student gender.

Students’ views about the nature of experimental physics

“…Red and pink represent students' responses from their own perspective for FY and BFY students, respectively, and blue and teal points represent students' predictions of what an experimental physicist might say for FY and BFY students, respectively. in the majority of the prior E-CLASS publications [23,26,29]. However, the 2-point scheme is consistent with the representations used in the reports received by instructors using E-CLASS through our centralized system [25].…”

“…Similarly, we have measured a significant improvement in E-CLASS scores in courses that use well-established transformed curricula compared to traditional labs at the introductory level, and the increase is significantly larger for women [28]. Finally, we have shown that courses that focus more on developing lab skills outperform courses that focus more on reinforcing physics concepts, and again, the increase is significantly larger for women [29].…”

Value added or misattributed? A multi-institution study on the educational benefit of labs for reinforcing physics content

“…Another possible claim is that the lab increases student motivation, which then is reflected in improved overall course performance. Studies of both concepts-based and structured lab courses, however, have shown that student attitudes and motivation towards experimental physics decrease by the end of such courses [15,27]. Regardless of whether the learning in the lab leads to improved learning in other aspects of the course, what we have shown is that these labs are not…”

“…The researchers compared the responses of students based on the structures of the lab courses in which they were enrolled. They found that students' perceptions of experimental physics became less expertlike in courses that were more guided compared with ones with open-ended activities [15] and in ones whose primary goals included focus on developing or reinforcing physics concepts compared with ones that focused on skills [27].…”

“…Recent work probing students' attitudes towards and beliefs about experimental physics have raised concerns about this goal [15,27]. In these two studies, almost 5000 students in over 100 courses at 67 different institutions were surveyed at the start and end of a physics lab course about several aspects of experimental physics.…”