Impact of a course transformation on students’ reasoning about measurement uncertainty

Pollard, Benjamin; Werth, Alexandra; Hobbs, Robert; Lewandowski, H. J.

doi:10.1103/physrevphyseducres.16.020160

Cited by 28 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Others have opted for having students experiment to test a suite of possible models to explain a weird observation 20 . Another approach has been to focus squarely on skills development, such as students' understanding of uncertainty and measurement [21][22][23] , communication skills 19,24 or data analysis skills 25 . Alternatively, allow students to ask the research questions (again, with structure) such that neither the student nor the instructor know the 'right' answer.…”

Section: Box 1 | Student Testing the Period Of A Pendulum At Different Angles Of Amplitude Explicitly Seeks To Verify The Simplified Modementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Researchers have tested how these various approaches compare with verification labs and repeatedly find that they improve students' experimentation skills and perceptions of experimental physics (for example, refs. [5][6][7]17,18,[20][21][22][23] ).…”

Section: Box 1 | Student Testing the Period Of A Pendulum At Different Angles Of Amplitude Explicitly Seeks To Verify The Simplified Modementioning

confidence: 99%

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Best practice for instructional labs

Smith

Holmes

2021

Nat. Phys.

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Section: Box 1 | Student Testing the Period Of A Pendulum At Different Angles Of Amplitude Explicitly Seeks To Verify The Simplified Modementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Box 1 | Student Testing the Period Of A Pendulum At Different Angles Of Amplitude Explicitly Seeks To Verify The Simplified Modementioning

confidence: 99%

Best practice for instructional labs

Smith

Holmes

2021

Nat. Phys.

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“…We used the point and set paradigms to code students' data analysis strategy and conclusion [9]. The coding scheme (as shown in Table III) was a modified version of the DMSS probe in PMQ developed by Pollard et al [11,15]. The DMSS probe concerns comparing two data sets collected by two experimenters from the same experimental setup.…”

Section: B Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, we added codes P5, S4, and T, and we split one code in Ref. [11] into U1 and U2 to capture new themes emergent from the responses.…”

Section: B Data Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In line with the framework of point and set paradigms, the Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) [9,10] was developed to classify student reasoning about statistical uncertainty. Prior studies have shown that traditional labs improve student reasoning about measurement uncertainty as measured by PMQ [10,11], and reformed labs have an even larger effect [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating student ability to draw conclusions from measurement data

Wan¹,

Mickelsen²

2021

2021 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

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In this study, we surveyed students from a calculus-based and an algebra-based introductory physics course at a liberal arts college about their ability to draw conclusions from measurement data. Both courses are taught in a studio mode and use the Workshop Physics curriculum. The survey questions were adapted from Kok et al. (2019), who found that an increase in the number of decimal places hinders students' ability to compare data sets. We administered the survey online before and after instruction on measurement uncertainty. On the survey, students considered two experiments that differ only by one setup. Students were first asked to make predictions about the experimental outcomes as to whether or not the outcomes agree, and then were given data to analyze and draw conclusions. The survey had two versions where the measurement data had either two or four decimal places. We used the framework of point and set paradigms to characterize student reasoning. The set paradigm emphasizes a measurement distribution rather than a single measurement; it is considered more expert-like. The results show that students tended to switch from a correct to an incorrect answer after analyzing the data. The number of decimal places did not seem to correlate with the switch in student answers. We also found that after instruction on measurement uncertainty, student reasoning tended to shift from the point paradigm toward set paradigm as many students included the standard deviation or standard deviation of the mean in the analysis. However, many students did not seem to recognize how the uncertainty could inform the conclusion as to whether or not the data sets agree; most students appeared to rely only on the comparison of the means. We discuss implications for instruction as well as future research areas.

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Instructional Strategies that Foster Experimental Physics Skills

Holmes

Smith

2023

The International Handbook of Physics Education Research: Learning Physics

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Physics is fundamentally an experimental science. Myriad skills are necessary to perform physics experiments. This chapter outlines what might constitute important experimental physics skills for physics education. Drawing on several perspectives on experimentation outlined in the physics education research literature, we focus on technical and practical skills, cognitive decision-making skills, and metacognitive skills and explore research on developing and assessing these skills in instructional labs. Finally, we end the chapter with a brief comment on what we see as the open areas of research regarding instructional strategies that foster experimental physics skills.

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Impact of a course transformation on students’ reasoning about measurement uncertainty

Cited by 28 publications

References 26 publications

Best practice for instructional labs

Best practice for instructional labs

Investigating student ability to draw conclusions from measurement data

Instructional Strategies that Foster Experimental Physics Skills

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