Who does what now? How physics lab instruction impacts student behaviors

Quinn, Katherine N.; McGill, Kathryn L.; Kelley, Michelle M.; Smith, Emily M.; Holmes, N. G.

doi:10.1119/perc.2018.pr.quinn

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Most other questions ask about physics content, and so we assume that students spent the majority of their time focused on conceptual understanding probed by the prompts rather than making decisions about the experimental design or data. This assumption agrees with other research that measures what students handle throughout the labs [42].…”

Section: Students' Engagement With Experimentationsupporting

confidence: 92%

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Direct Measurement of the Impact of Teaching Experimentation in Physics Labs

et al. 2020

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While there have been many calls to improve the quality of instructional physics labs, there exists little research on the effectiveness of lab instruction. This study provides a direct comparison between labs that have goals to reinforce physics content to those that emphasize experimentation skills. In this controlled study, all students attended the same lecture and discussion sections, had the same homework and exams, but attended labs that had one of two aims: teaching experimentation or reinforcing content. We compare students' engagement with experimentation during the lab as well as the impacts on students' exam performance and attitudes and beliefs about experimental physics. We find no measurable differences between lab conditions on students' exam performance. Nonetheless, we find measurable and significant improvements in students' engagement in expertlike experimentation practices and attitudes and beliefs about experimental physics for students in the experimentation labs. The benefits of the experimentation labs are stable across two subsequent semesters of implementation, as measured via standardized assessments. The results provide direct evidence of the extensive benefits of using labs to teach experimentation while directly demonstrating that shifting instructional goals and structure in labs can occur without cost to performance on course exams.

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Section: Students' Engagement With Experimentationsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Every 5 min, they recorded each student's behavior using an observation protocol (see Ref. [42]) and marked the time segment at which the student left the lab for the day. Appendix A 2 provides details for how these TABLE I.…”

Section: Students' Engagement With Experimentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Direct Measurement of the Impact of Teaching Experimentation in Physics Labs

et al. 2020

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“…While a 50/50 split might sound equitable on the surface, as reported by previous work [17,[37][38][39][40], more so than in samegender groups it is not uncommon for students in mixedgender lab groups to engage in gendered task division in which men tend to do one type of work while women tend to do another. Thus, the mutuality of engagement associated with a "fair split" of the work is markedly different from, and may be less equitable than, the mutuality of engagement associated with an distribution of the learning activities in which each group member participates equally in all aspects of the work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

What Makes a Good Physics Lab Partner?

Doucette¹,

Clark²,

Singh³

2020

2020 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

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Students who take lab courses engage in active, collaborative learning that has the potential to teach scientific thinking skills while also stimulating students' interest in science and developing their self-efficacy. We describe different types of collaboration in terms of the mutuality of engagement they represent, and investigate how these different types of collaboration impacted student interest and self-efficacy in introductory physics labs. We surveyed college physics students about their beliefs and experiences regarding working with a lab partner. We find that when asked explicitly about what they valued in a lab partner, a majority of students noted that they wanted a "fair split" of the work. However, we find that students experienced improved physics interest and self-efficacy when they participated equally in all aspects of the lab, such as operating the apparatus and recording the data, which is a different form of mutuality of engagement. This form of participation disproportionately benefited women, a traditionally disadvantaged group in physics labs. Our findings suggest that students' physics interest and self-efficacy might be positively impacted in lab courses that are designed to ensure that students participate equally in all aspects of the lab work, as opposed to lab courses in which students split up their work inequitably, as they might prefer to do.

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“…Agency in a lab is also influenced by the learning environment and social-classroom dynamics and hierarchies [21], with such dynamics and hierarchies being imported from the wider cultural context in sciences [22]. If one student takes charge in a group, other students might not perceive the agency afforded to them [23,24]. In particular, members of marginalized groups might perceive themselves as having less agency to participate in tasks or group discourses because of their peers.…”

Section: Literature Review and Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sense of agency, gender, and students’ perception in open-ended physics labs

Kalender¹,

Stein²,

Holmes³

2020

2020 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings

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Instructional physics labs are critical junctures for many STEM majors to develop an understanding of experimentation in the sciences. Students can acquire useful experimental skills and grow their identities as scientists. However, many traditionally-instructed labs do not necessarily involve authentic physics experimentation features in their curricula. Recent research calls for a reformation in undergraduate labs to incorporate more student agency and choice in the learning processes. In our institution, we have adopted open-ended lab teaching in the introductory physics courses. By using reformed curricula that provide higher student agency, we analyzed approximately 100 students in the introductory-level lab courses to examine their views towards the open-ended physics labs. Between the start and the end of the semester, we found a statistically significant shift in students' perceptions about the agency afforded in lab activities. We also examined students' responses to "Which lab unit was your favorite and why?". The analysis showed that majority of the students preferred Project Lab, which had the highest student agency and coding analysis showed that "freedom" was the most frequent response for students' reason for picking Project Lab. Finally, we also examined student views across gender and found no significant gender effect on students' sense of agency.

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Who does what now? How physics lab instruction impacts student behaviors

Cited by 9 publications

References 14 publications

Direct Measurement of the Impact of Teaching Experimentation in Physics Labs

Direct Measurement of the Impact of Teaching Experimentation in Physics Labs

What Makes a Good Physics Lab Partner?

Sense of agency, gender, and students’ perception in open-ended physics labs

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