Teaching Measurement and Uncertainty the GUM Way

Buffler, Andy; Allie, Saalih; Lubben, Fred

doi:10.1119/1.3023655

Cited by 44 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Physics education research (PER) is well established at the University of Cape Town and has, in part led to various improvements and reforms in physics teaching see, for example, Refs. [21][22][23][24][25][26]). Unfortunately, however, these efforts have thus far not included astronomy.…”

Section: A Motivation For Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town: Probing student perspectives

Rajpaul

Allie

Blyth

2014

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res.

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We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town. This course is taken by a diverse range of students, including many from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. We describe the development of an instrument, the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (IAQ), which we administered as pre-and post-tests to students enrolled in the course. The instrument comprised a small number of questions which probed three areas of interest: student motivation and expectations, astronomy content, and worldview. Amongst our findings were that learning gains were made in several conceptual areas, and that students appeared to develop a more nuanced view of the nature of astronomy. There was some evidence that the course had a positive impact on students' worldviews, particularly their attitudes towards science. We also identified a promising predictor of course success that could in future be used to identify students requiring special teaching intervention.

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Section: A Motivation For Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town: Probing student perspectives

Rajpaul

Allie

Blyth

2014

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res.

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“…We have designed and implemented a course 30 based on the probabilistic framework of metrology, which provides opportunities for students to explore the nature of uncertainty in measurement through activities that challenge notions of measurement yielding an exact ͑pointlike͒ result. For example, students are asked to read both analog and digital scales of increasing sensitivity.…”

Section: Consequences and Recommendations For Course Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of a conventional introductory laboratory course on the understanding of measurement

Volkwyn

Allie

Buffler

et al. 2008

Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res.

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Conventional physics laboratory courses generally include an emphasis on increasing students' ability to carry out data analysis according to scientific practice, in particular, those aspects that relate to measurement uncertainty. This study evaluates the efficacy of the conventional approach by analyzing the understanding of measurement of freshmen following the physics major sequence, i.e., top achievers, with regard to data collection, data processing, and data comparison, through pre-and postinstruction tests by using an established instrument. The findings show that the laboratory course improved the performance of the majority of students insofar as the more mechanical aspects of data collection and data processing were concerned. However, only about 20% of the cohort of physics majors exhibited a deeper understanding of measurement uncertainty required for data comparison.

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“…There is much research demonstrating the effectiveness of labbased pedagogies at developing skills such as evaluating data and models, dealing with uncertainty and variability in data, and designing experiments [45][46][47][48][49][50].…”

Section: Midterm Exammentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Holmes

Olsen

Thomas

et al. 2017

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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Instructional labs are widely seen as a unique, albeit expensive, way to teach scientific content. We measured the effectiveness of introductory lab courses at achieving this educational goal across nine different lab courses at three very different institutions. These institutions and courses encompassed a broad range of student populations and instructional styles. The nine courses studied had two key things in common: the labs aimed to reinforce the content presented in lectures, and the labs were optional. By comparing the performance of students who did and did not take the labs (with careful normalization for selection effects), we found universally and precisely no added value to learning course content from taking the labs as measured by course exam performance. This work should motivate institutions and departments to reexamine the goals and conduct of their lab courses, given their resource-intensive nature. We show why these results make sense when looking at the comparative mental processes of students involved in research and instructional labs, and offer alternative goals and instructional approaches that would make lab courses more educationally valuable.

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Teaching Measurement and Uncertainty the GUM Way

Cited by 44 publications

References 15 publications

Introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town: Probing student perspectives

Introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town: Probing student perspectives

Impact of a conventional introductory laboratory course on the understanding of measurement

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

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