In this talk, we will present a short exchange collected from an introductory physics class in which a group of students works with a Learning Assistant to make sense of rotational motion. In the exchange, students express disbelief about the outcome of an experiment, as it contradicts their sensory experiences. Although they continue to feel unconvinced, they accept the physics explanations offered by their LA, who encourages them to trust physics over their bodily experiences. As we study students’ learning experiences, we are interested in answering the question: What is it about the physics learning environment that shapes their willingness to disembody?

A variety of knowledge and skills is generally considered as vital for answering physics questions. Meanwhile, many introductory physics instructors recognize that a large number of students, to some degree, lack the appropriate fluency in such skills. To address this issue, we developed a set of practice assignments employing the “STEM Fluency” theoretical framework. The assignments are mastery-based weekly online assignments aimed at improving fluency in knowledge and skills required across different introductory physics problems, including specific skills, such as determining the sign of work, and more general, such as trigonometry and algebra. One of two different sets of these basic skills were assigned to each lecture section in algebra-based and calculus-based introductory physics courses during the fall 2021 and spring 2022 semesters at a large public research university. We present some preliminary evidence of an apparently positive training effect on post-test and final exam performance, with careful attention paid to controlling for appropriate covariates such as pre-test score or performance on exam items not relevant to training. Spurious effects from differences in lecture sections are discussed, which motivates future random assignment of practice conditions across lecture sections to increase confidence in the observed effect.

We analyze institutional data from large introductory algebra-based physics courses at a large public research university in which the majority of students are biological science majors. A large percentage of these students are on a pre-health professional track in which they aspire to become health professionals. Two introductory physics courses are required for these students and they are often considered “weed out” courses, meaning low performance in these courses can hinder students’ long term career goal achievement. In particular, these courses can act as gatekeepers for many students, particularly those who come from less privileged backgrounds, e.g., ethnic and racial minority (ERM) students, who may not have had access to the best educational resources prior to college. In these physics courses, many students who do not perform to their satisfaction the first time repeat, particularly if they aspire to become health professionals. In this investigation we analyze the performance of students from different demographic groups who repeated the first introductory algebra-based physics course. These findings can be beneficial to contemplate strategies for creating equitable and inclusive learning environments and providing support to help all students excel in these algebra-based physics courses which are pivotal for accomplishing their long-term career goals.

Both instructor experience and an increasing amount of physics education research points to the importance of affective experiences in student learning. In order to develop methods of documenting student affective experiences, we collected brief weekly reflections in which introductory physics for life science students wrote about their sense of engagement and confidence in their ability to achieve their goals. We report preliminary findings about the connections between the experiences reported in these reflections and the curricular, pedagogical, and relational elements of the course. In particular, we describe how experiences vary by student seniority and high school physics background. We also expand upon what is learned from the reflections by triangulating with surveys and case study interviews conducted with a small subset of the class. This work is a first step toward better understanding how introductory physics for life science courses can be designed to positively shape the student affective experience.