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Trumper, Ricardo

doi:10.1023/a:1025692409001

Cited by 96 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…There are at least three general categories of goals that are typically discussed in the literature around laboratory courses: (i) to reinforce the physics concepts taught within the lecture courses [3,6,7]; (ii) to develop students' practical lab skills [4,8]; and (iii) to foster students' understanding of, and appreciation for, the nature and importance of science generally and physics specifically [3,5,7,8]. These goals are not, by any means, mutually exclusive; however, the types of activities and assessments that are most often used to support and assess success with respect to these goals can be quite different.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Wilcox

Lewandowski

2017

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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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.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Wilcox

Lewandowski

2017

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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“…This kind of longitudinal study has not been conducted previously in part because there are significant theoretical and practical barriers to such a study. For example, there are many possible learning goals for physics lab courses, including reinforcing students' understanding of physics concepts [2,7,8]; teaching students' practical lab skills such as troubleshooting, critical thinking, and measurement skills [4,5,9,10]; and fostering students' understanding of, and appreciation for, the nature and importance of experimental physics [5,7,8,11]. Longitudinal investigations of improvement in students' conceptual knowledge over multiple lab courses would be difficult given that the majority of lab courses at different levels (e.g., introductory to advanced) target a wide range of physics topics with only small overlap in the particular physics concepts used.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Students' epistemologies and expectations have also been shown to be linked to other measures of student success such as performance, interest, and persistence in physics [16][17][18]. Helping students to cultivate expertlike views with respect to the nature and importance of experimental physics has also been called out as an important goal of undergraduate physics labs by both researchers [5,11,19] and national organizations [10,20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improvement or selection? A longitudinal analysis of students’ views about experimental physics in their lab courses

Wilcox

Lewandowski

2017

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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Laboratory courses represent a unique and potentially important component of the undergraduate physics curriculum, which can be designed to allow students to authentically engage with the process of experimental physics. Among other possible benefits, participation in these courses throughout the undergraduate physics curriculum presents an opportunity to develop students' understanding of the nature and importance of experimental physics within the discipline as a whole. Here, we present and compare both a longitudinal and pseudo-longitudinal analysis of students' responses to a research-based assessment targeting students' views about experimental physics -the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) -across multiple, required lab courses at a single institution. We find that, while pseudo-longitudinal averages showed increases in students' E-CLASS scores in each consecutive course, analysis of longitudinal data indicates that this increase was not driven by a cumulative impact of laboratory instruction. Rather, the increase was driven by a selection effect in which students who persisted into higher-level lab courses already had more expert-like beliefs, attitudes, and expectations than their peers when they started the lower-level courses.

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“…Creating such opportunities requires significant investments in physical space, sophisticated equipment, and instructor support. Despite the abundant opportunities and resources in many laboratory courses, concerns are frequently raised about how effective such courses are at fulfilling their potential [1,2]. Problems often manifest themselves as a gap between the kinds of practices going on in the laboratory classroom and the practices going on in professional scientific research and engineering labs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemology and expectations survey about experimental physics: Development and initial results

Zwickl

Hirokawa

Finkelstein

et al. 2014

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res.

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In response to national calls to better align physics laboratory courses with the way physicists engage in research, we have developed an epistemology and expectations survey to assess how students perceive the nature of physics experiments in the contexts of laboratory courses and the professional research laboratory. The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) evaluates students' epistemology at the beginning and end of a semester. Students respond to paired questions about how they personally perceive doing experiments in laboratory courses and how they perceive an experimental physicist might respond regarding their research. Also, at the end of the semester, the E-CLASS assesses a third dimension of laboratory instruction, students' reflections on their course's expectations for earning a good grade. By basing survey statements on widely embraced learning goals and common critiques of teaching labs, the E-CLASS serves as an assessment tool for lab courses across the undergraduate curriculum and as a tool for physics education research. We present the development, evidence of validation, and initial formative assessment results from a sample that includes 45 classes at 20 institutions. We also discuss feedback from instructors and reflect on the challenges of large-scale online administration and distribution of results.

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Untitled

Cited by 96 publications

References 84 publications

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

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

Improvement or selection? A longitudinal analysis of students’ views about experimental physics in their lab courses

Epistemology and expectations survey about experimental physics: Development and initial results

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