Prevalence and nature of computational instruction in undergraduate physics programs across the United States

Abstract

A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The results suggest that more faculty have some form of computational teaching experience than a decade ago, but it appears that this experience does not necessarily translate to computational instruction in undergraduate students' formal course work. Further, we find that formal programs in computational physics are absent from most departments. A majority of faculty do report using computation on homework and in projects, but few report using computation with interactive engagement methods in the classroom or on exams. Specific factors that underlie these results are the subject of future work, but we do find that there is a variation on the reported experience with computation and the highest degree that students can earn at the surveyed institutions.

Physics computational literacy: An exploratory case study using computational essays

“…In part, this is an expected component of the theory, because the ways in which literacies manifest are always strongly tied to the cultural and historical contexts in which they are used [20]. Computation and programming are also not yet widely integrated into physics education [15,16], and so the ways in which computational literacy will manifest in other programs is likely to be different than the ways it manifests at the University of Oslo. At the same time, we feel that the University of Oslo can present a useful example of a program in which computation has been integrated for close to two decades, and the potential benefits and opportunities this long-running integration brings.…”

“…Despite this progress, computation is not yet widely integrated into physics teaching. Apart from a few wellestablished curricula like Matter & Interactions and certain mathematical tools (e.g., Mathematica and MATLAB), most university-level physics courses have relatively little engagement with computation [15][16][17]. There are numerous systemic factors related to this lack of adoption [18], but we contend that these factors alone should not deter the physics education research community from exploring ways in which computation can positively influence physics teaching, and vice versa.…”

Identifying features predictive of faculty integrating computation into physics courses

“…As 60% of the respondents to our survey indicated they have experience teaching computation, our claim that these faculty are early adopters may seem contentious as 60% is a majority of faculty. However, Caballero and Merner note that those who use computation are more likely to respond to the survey than those who do not use computation [3]. Thus, 60% should be thought of as an upper limit on the percentage of faculty using computation in their courses.…”

Using Conceptual Blending to model how we interpret computational models

“…As the inclusion of computational modeling in the introductory curriculum continues to gain traction within the broader physics community [1][2][3][4][5], educators face an increasing need to understand how students read and compose programming code so as to better support these students' learning. While there exist broad discussions of computational thinking [e.g.…”